After what could be described as a cool reception to the news that Valve would allow modders to charge for their creations, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell took to reddit to talk about mods, Valve's reasoning behind the move, and his confidence that mod authors won't have their creations ripped-off.
Addressing concerns that a pay model will corrupt the modding community, Newell said Valve's goal is to improve modding both for the authors and gamers. "If something doesn't help with that, it will get dumped," he said, adding that while he believes this will be a win-win situation for modders and gamers, ultimately the data will decide what stays or goes.
Some different news articles:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32480606http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-04-27-gabe-newell-responds-to-paid-for-mod-controversyhttp://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/04/26/valve-adding-pay-what-you-want-option-to-steam-workshop-mods
As you might expect, I'm massively against this. Making a tiny amount of pocket money for some modders (which is all most of us would make, with one or two exceptions) is simply not worth the amount of hate and screwups this will cause in the modding communities. I like modding for its communities, that's why this whole place is even here, and I don't want to see them ripped apart by arguments over money. Suddenly, you're turning hobbyists into service providers. People with obligations to paying customers. I don't want to be financially obligated to the people that download my mods - seriously, have you MET some of the people who download my mods? What I do, as I see it, is make fun toys, give them to people, and some of them go and have fun playing with them. It's nice, I enjoy it, they enjoy it. The value is already encapsulated for everyone concerned, and it
doesn't need a price tag.
Except if Valve and Bethesda and the like think they can make a quick buck from it, which is presumably what's happened here.