"We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different."
At launch last week, the new feature was greeted with a lot of disbelief and negative criticism, but Valve kept a brave face, believing their idea was going to benefit both modders and players alike. Valve boss Gabe Newell himself went out on Reddit to explain what they were trying to achieve, hoping to stop the flood of negative feedback, but to no prevail. They explain that they initially wanted to give modders a platform where they could make money off their work and in that way be able to eventually make a living out of it and make even more great content for everyone to enjoy:
"We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it."
Valve acknowledge the fact that they completely underestimated the differences between their previous successful paid services and the introduction of paid mods for Skyrim. Furthermore, they also admit that choosing Skyrim to spearhead the project was a poor decision:
"We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here."
The idea is not being completely scrapped, so a modified version of the feature might return at some point in the future. But for now, it is completely removed from the site and all purchases will be refunded.
Skyrim developer Bethesda commented the decision on their own blog:
"After discussion with Valve, and listening to our community, paid mods are being removed from Steam Workshop. Even though we had the best intentions, the feedback has been clear – this is not a feature you want. Your support means everything to us, and we hear you."
Are you happy you can get your free mods again, or would you like to see this feature return in the future? What do you think have to change if they bring it back?
Thank you Z61 for the topic submission!
