Steam Workshop Paid Modding

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Overview

Steam Workshop Paid Modding refers to a change implemented by Valve on their Steam Workshop software distribution platform in April 2015, allowing mod creators to sell their custom video game addons directly to gamers. The action was poorly received by many Steam users, who disagreed with monetizing game mods which had previously been free.

Background

On April 23rd, 2015, Valve announced that game modders would be able to charge users of the Steam Workshop service to download game addons, with Steam taking 75% of the revenue for facilitating the transaction. That day, several mods for the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were the first to arrive for sale on the Steam Workshop.^[2]

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

That day, several anti-paid mods steam groups were launched, including "Modgate2015",^[3] "Say NO! to paid mods"^[4], and "Boycott Buying Workshop Mods."^[5] In response to the news, YouTubers TotalBiscuit and Gopher posted videos about their thoughts on paid mods (shown below).

Meanwhile, a petition was created on Change.org^[10] titled "Remove the paid content of the Steam Workshop," which gathered upwards of 51,000 signatures in the first 24 hours (shown below).

Also on April 23rd, several posts about the paid mods reached the front page of Reddit, including several photoshopped images mocking the Steam Workshop changes (shown below).^[6]^[7]^[8]^[17]^[18]^[19]

Joke Mods

On April 24th, 2015, Kotaku^[11] published an article compiling several Skyrim joke mods for sale on the Steam Workshop, including the Golden Potato Mod,^[12] Extra Apple Mod,^[13] Micro Transactions,^[14] Chicken Companion,^[15] Steam Main Menu Replacer^[16] and Gaben's Genitals HD Resolution 100 Dollars^[17] (shown below).

Valve Removes Paid Mods

On April 27th, Steam announced they had functionally removed the paid mods, stating whomever paid for any mods would be refunded.^[21] The game studio Bethesda published a blog post to explain their stance on paid mods^[23]. Claiming the program was created with good intentions, but had been canceled due to customer feedback. Additionally, Valve posted their official statement on the /r/pccmasterrace^[24] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 4,900 votes (97% upvoted) and 3,300 comments in the first 18 hours.

We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount. We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.
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.
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 & 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.
But 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.