It took less than a month and Valve has already taken down its "pay-for-mods" option from its Steam service. Controversies erupted after the gaming community initiated an online petition to take the option off, a petition that garnered over 130,000 signatures in less than 48 hours.
"We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop," said Valve, cited by Destructoid. "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."
This was later followed by the controversy with Chesko's "Art of the Catch" mod for "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim." It was later reported by Kotaku that Chesko's mod used assets from someone else. Chesko immediately took the mod down following the controversy of whether or not he had the right to sell his finished mod.
According to a new report from Wired, the whole system has been taken down. Valve has removed all paid mods thus far and has issued a statement confirming that all customers who paid for the available mods will be given a refund. However, Valve CEO and co-founder Gabe Newell hints that the service won't be gone forever.
Before the option was completely removed, Eurogamer cites that Newell mentioned "pay-what-you-want" donations for mods and mod makers. Users could donate money instead of having to purchase a mod. However, Newell also insisted that the minimum amount for a donation would be designated by the mod creator.
As reported by Eurogamer, Newell stated that the intentions of the company was not solely for monetary gains but to also help flourish the modding community, a community that gave birth to successful products such as "DotA" and "Counter-Strike," both of which are player-created mods for "Warcraft 3" and "Half-Life" respectively.
Kotaku continues to explain that the reason these mods have been successful is because they do not thrive on the same financial scale that the licensed games do. Mods are created by the fans for the fans and Kotaku explains that this is the model that should remain.
