Please explain, why you think they have full legal control already. When someone created a texture and chooses to use it for a Skyrim mod, that does not make that texture be owned by Beth or Skyrim. The texture can be applied to anything one deems fit. Switching on the light in a house does not make Edison posthumou®sly owner of your house. You might refer to the plugins and the geck then. Well. Should the geck be the culprit, we collect a little money and buy some third partie liscenses Beth and Steam themselves didn't bought exclusively and publish our own geck. What can it cost? 10.000? 100.000? Piece of cake in this large community. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/924398-1328391811.jpg You're just arguing to argue now. If I'd said so and so had the rights to such and such, it would be silly to think they also had rights for all content. A company that sells generic music, for example, keeps ownership of their music even after it is used in another production. To understand what I meant, make a mod and try to sell it without legal repercussions. You can't. Steam is offering to change that for you. I am not arguing just to argue, i am not that kind of person. Thing is, regarding the agreement, the full content of the mod is owned by steam and the offer steam makes, is getting the repercussions in the first place, by "selling" to them. You can not republish what you publish at their place. You are not treated like the loops and samplers company you are talking off, because that company can publish those loops to anyone they want. They could not do so, if they posted their loops on steam, e.g. as a modders resource. They would instantly loose the ability to publish or sell it somewhere else. For only 25% were everyone can do, what steam is doing in this age of the internet (the nexus would not exist otherwise), that would be indeed a very bad business decision.