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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Valve pulls paid mods from Steam

New feature removed in the face of vocal criticism.

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Valve has confirmed that they're removing the recently added paid mod marketplace from Steam, and that all customers who have bought mods will be refunded.

"We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing," Valve's Alden Kroll wrote. "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.

"To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free and paid. 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."

It was a noble attempt at rewarding content creators, and although there'll no doubt be some who were looking forward to getting paid for their work, the company accepts that their attempts at change have disrupted the established order.

"We underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim's workshop. 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.

"Now that you've backed a dump truck of feedback onto our inboxes, we'll be chewing through that, but if you have any further thoughts let us know."

The first game to get paid mods via Valve's attempt at an open marketplace was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and developers Bethesda explained why they had signed up for the scheme. They wanted to back content creators and modders who've long-supported their games. They also accepted that, although they had the best intentions, this feature appears largely unwanted by the community.

"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," read their statement.

Some people objected to the way the monies were being split between the different parties, some just believe that mods ought to be free, while others spammed the marketplace with joke mods and asked for ridiculous sums of money as a way of making their point.

At the end of the day those who stood against the move have their way and the feature has now been taken down by Valve. It's clear that the company is thinking hard about how to improve and add more value to this part of their community, and with that being the case, this is probably not the end of the matter. With Valve on the receiving end of huge amounts of feedback in recent days, it's quite possible that there's a balanced solution hidden away in there somewhere just waiting to be found and implemented. We await with interest to see what that might be.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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