Paid mods, some posted from the FAQ earlier on in the thread that they are not. Well, it comes down to how you want to look at it. In essence and structure, the DLCs are also mods, the difference is just that they are part of the lore as well as made by bethesda themself. So to me, these paid mods are microtransactions. Moving on from that... The targeted group to sell these to is probably the console user. Let's be honest here, as of right now, we have more than a hundred thousand mods total for skyrim all over the internet, including asia, beth net and all those blogs. PC user will not see a value in purchasing a number of armors with the choice that already is there, console user though would be happy to see new content. Something I do would love to see would be full on DLC size content, that is the kind of stuff PC user would pay for. Worst case, there will be mod piracy happening and a seperate site will profit with ads on the demand on those paid mods. Best case, we will see content that add proper value in terms of size, something that is worth paying for when we keep in mind how many mods there currently are. They will hardly be "making money". You won't be paying the mod authors, you will be paying Bethesda, who will have given a tiny portion to the modder. It's like saying I want Bethesda's "workers" to make money, while knowing that they are hiring workers from around the planet probably working well below reasonable industry rates. They are paying up front payments to the modders, and not giving a percent cut. I don't think anyone would ever say "I want to support Chinese sweatshop workers by buying Nike shoes". Nobody will be making major mods under this scheme I think. Nobody is going to go to all the work of organizing, building and working on what amounts to a small game for a single payment and no profit share. We may want to wait for a few weeks and see how the contracts are going to look like. My guess is the same as yours, Bethesda, no, not the game studio, makes a rather greedy impression in recent times. No review copies and other bad business practises do show the direction they are going in and I, too, have concerns that they will attempt to rip off modder.
