Valve posted an update on all of this in regards to attempts to steal content: http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-expects-steam-community-to-help-police-paid-mods/ (Quote: "Today's announcement that mod makers will now be able to sell their creations directly to gamers on Steam was big news by any measure. But it also led to questions, one of the foremost being how Valve plans to handle mods that rip off other people's work. As it turns out, there is a plan, and it's actually rather novel." In worst-case scenarios, DMCA notices can be used to force the removal of stolen work, but the idea is to avoid the need to take that step in the first place. "Newly posted items to be sold must first appear as visible to the community without a purchase option before they can be sold," Vice President of Marketing Doug Lombardi explained. "This will provide some time for the community to help identify abuse or stolen content and report appropriately. It’s also a time that developers can use to review pending items and decide if any intervention is necessary." ) Honestly, I don't know if this will even be enough. Of course they're leaving it up to us to police the mods but 24-hours? People that steal mods sometimes take the time to make little changes here & there in a mod in order to try and make their stolen mod look as if they made it themselves. That generally leads to a lot of arguing and debate over that particular mod as well as in-depth investigation. A person would just have to spend enough time making small changes to someone else's work to try and hold out long enough for that 24-hour period to go by and then they can ride off of the gulliable members of the community that never read mod descriptions and just see a cool mod & immediately download it. It's just one possible scenario but, either way, this worries me.
