After having followed this controversy for most of the day, after having heard about it last night, I must say that I'm of two minds on the matter. First, I should probably stress that I'm not against modders being compensated for the work they put into quality mods. I could name a few off the top of my head that I'd definitely be willing to pay a few bucks for to have - Interesting NPCs, Moonpath to Elsweyr, Falskaar are a few that comes to mind. However, this is not where the crux of my concerns with the new Steam Workshop lies, but in the long-term effects and consequences this might have for the modding community. Humour me and ask yourselves this: How many mods in your load order would still be there, if you had to pay for them? In my case, I'm fairly sure that a majority would be gone, regardless if I liked them/found them useful or not. As selfish as it might seem, I just couldn't justify paying for a lot of them, as nice or useful that they may be. I'd save my money for the more essential mods that I know I'd be guaranteed to use. While I can't speak for anyone but myself, I'm fairly certain I'm not alone thinking this. Correct me if I'm wrong. Humour me some more and imagine if "Paid Mods" became the norm and making money the main driving force behind modding, which it might very well become if the community allows this to continue unchecked (which it doesn't seem like it is doing, thankfully). Judging from the reactions We'd most likely end up with a lot less people bothering with a lot less mods, leaving modders with a lot less people enjoying their works, and leaving them with a lot less income. This could in turn lead to a lot of modders, especially smaller ones, leave the community when their mods don't turn a profit. And in the end, leaving us with a stale competitive market where only the biggest names survive, rather than the thriving, diverse community it once was. And this isn't even mentioning the massive amount of people that would just jump onto the modding bandwagon to try and make a quick buck. Of course, this all speculations, and these predictions could turn out to be completely wrong. However, I haven't really seen anything about the way Valve's implemented this that's left me with any positive impressions. Frankly, the new workshop has left me far more worried than hopeful for the future of this modding community, which up until now hasn't been about making money (and hopefully still isn't). While I can't speak for the modders here, I'd like to believe that most of them didn't get into this scene expecting to make a profit (After all, why would they've expected that at the time? Other than through donations), but because it was a game they were passionate about and enjoyed modding. After all, it's that attitude that's made the Bethesda modding community thrive for so long and become as large as it has.
