Skyrim Mods: now with paid option

[TheFeniX]

I've lived to see $5 horse armor, gameplay modes locked behind pre-orders, season passes, $5 .ini changes, day-one launch DLC, and now paid mods. Not just that, pirating third-party mods is going to be a thing. On that note, there was some modder on the nexus a while back everyone was crowing about (she made really high-quality stuff) but would mostly just post screenshots of her work and never release the mods. Nexus users would get up in arms about it. I need to try and remember her name and see if she comes out of the woodworks to make some cash, just for grins.

We’ve had a long and excellent relationship with our good friends at Valve. We worked together to make the Workshop a huge part of Skyrim, and we’re excited that something we’ve been working together on for a long time is finally happening. You can now charge for the mods you create.

Unlike other curated games on Steam that allow users to sell their creations, this will be the first game with an open market. It will not be curated by us or Valve. It was essential to us that our fans decide what they want to create, what they want to download, and what they want to charge.

Many of our fans have been modding our games since Morrowind, for over 10 years. They now have the opportunity to earn money doing what they love – and all fans have a new way to support their favorite mod authors. We’ve also updated Skyrim and the Creation Kit with new features to help support paid mods including the ability to upload master files, adding more categories and removing filesize limit restrictions.

What does this mean for you?

As a modder, you now have the option of listing your creations at a price determined by you. Or, you can continue to share your projects for free. For those shopping for new mods, Valve is making sure you can try any mod risk free.

For full details on these changes to the Skyrim Workshop, check out Steam’s announcement page and FAQ.

Modding has been important to all our games for such a long time. We try to create worlds that come alive and you can make your own, but it’s in modding where it truly does. Thanks again for all your incredible support over the years. We hope steps like this breathe new life into Skyrim for everyone.

Bethesda Game Studios

Wet and Cold is now $5. Optional "Pay what you want: $0.99." As neat as the mod is, it just makes you drip water and snow collect on your character. On the same page, you can now spend $30, more than the game costs now, for mods that were free yesterday, due to the EULA. I checked and the nexus version of Wet and Cold is still only at 1.422. Steam version is at 2.0, but doesn't really add anything. In fact, it even removes steam effects. Seems like there will be mod authors that use a "freemium" system where paid versions of the mod get updates/features and the free versions (that they don't pull) will be outdated. I'm so fucking glad I never used the workshop: as bad as the nexus and the mod manager can be, it's still far and above the bullshit this is going to turn into.

Hey, maybe Beth can now release a CK that isn't shit or add first-party animation support so I don't have to fuck with FNIS anymore.

[TheFeniX]

Day 1 early access mods. My boss is wondering why I'm laughing so much on my lunch break.

Art of the Catch is early in development, however the fishing mechanic is fully functional. Because of this, it is currently being offered at an Early Introductory Price. The suggested and minimum price will increase as additional features are added and the Version 1.0 milestone has been reached.

Holy shit, there really is no God. I held on this long and Skyrim finally convinced me! I can't stop giggling like an idiot.

[TheFeniX]

Sorry I keep replying to myself, but I keep missing the edit window while I look this up during lunch. Gotta get back to work, but I just wanted to find info on the cut valve (and I assume Beth) is taking. If someone wants to slam my ramblings into one post, fair enough. Anyways, I can't find it myself because I won't go far into into the purchase for fear of actually buying something, but reddit says it's 75% to valve.

Good times.......

[Mr Bean]

Sorry I keep replying to myself, but I keep missing the edit window while I look this up during lunch. Gotta get back to work, but I just wanted to find info on the cut valve (and I assume Beth) is taking. If someone wants to slam my ramblings into one post, fair enough. Anyways, I can't find it myself because I won't go far into into the purchase for fear of actually buying something, but reddit says it's 75% to valve.

Good times.......

I assume 75% cut includes something for the game maker but it's not broken out.
But yes, sorry Skyrim mods, the fun of Skyrim mods is cramming 150 mods together in a delicate balancing act to just have enough mods to make the game amazing but not to fall to shit with 50000 conflicting files.

Charging me money for a mod that might or mod not even work? Yeah go fuck yourself. It would be different it was a total conversion mod. But I'm not going to pay 5$ for prettier snow effects no more than I'm going to pay 2.99$ for a red grenade launcher fuck you Evolve.

[Zaune]

Didn't Microsoft Flight Simulator do basically the same thing a few years back?

[TheFeniX]

Didn't Microsoft Flight Simulator do basically the same thing a few years back?

No idea, but isn't the game still like $200? Not exactly the same market as Skyrim.

I don't know how this works out legally. I pick on Wet and Cold because it's really the only paid mod (right now) that seems to be combining the entirety of why this idea sucks. What about all the other mod authors that the WC guy collaborated with for his mod? He has a pretty long credits list. Pretty sure SKSE and SkyUI are requirements for Wet and Cold. Hell, those are pretty much a requirement for MOST mods that are something more than a reskin or remodel. Are they getting a cut of the proceeds? Do they have any legal claim to SKSE and SkyUI? Does Beth own the rights to them? Last I check, 50 people had already "subscribed" to the paid version of Wet and Cold.

The reason why mods were always free was because you couldn't take the developer's work, change it a bit, and make money off that because it's their original assets. Framework developers are a major issue here. I hope they find a way to fuck with the system, but SKSE is one of the few mods worth some money due to what it does and that Beth has horrible coders.

I doubt the next ES game will support "unofficial" modding and to keep this going, Workshop mods are going to get DRM put into them because nothing stop me from buying a mod and uploading the files somewhere else for others to download. There's a reason you can't mod many newer games, they'd rather sell you reskins than let you do them yourselves. Beth is just cutting out the cost of actually making anything and keeping most of the profits while having no overhead. Sweet. Fucking. Deal.

Only thing I can figure is even though PC Skyrim has been the least popular version by far, they've rung out the console players as much as they can and Steam sales don't push much more these days. So, they can now wring a bit more out of a 4 year-old game. The future of gaming keeps getting bleaker by the year.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Eh, it'll crash and burn. The market for paid mods is likely going to be too tiny for anybody to bother come six months from now. Especially if the creators are only getting 25% of the sell price.

And even if DRM managed to get into a mod, good luck stopping someone from replicating it out of spite. If you know your way around scripting you can replicate even the most difficult mods out there. Most mods don't even require that, you just have to understand the Creation Kit.

[Darth Nostril]

As bad as the nexus and the mod manager can be, it's still far and above the bullshit this is going to turn into.

Mod Organizer all the way baby, sandboxes all your mods so no game files get overwritten thus preventing your install from getting borked, multiple profiles so you can play as different classes just load up the profile for the one you want to play today and it will download & install direct from NM. Only a complete newbie would ever download something from Steam Workshop where quality control happens to other people.

Hey, maybe Beth can now release a CK that isn't shit or add first-party animation support so I don't have to fuck with FNIS anymore.

Preaching to the choir, but I've got into the habit of deleting my Bashed, FNIS & DSR patches everytime I install, edit or alter a mod, then create new ones. Also moving all but the latest ten saves into my game backup folder, running saves through an orphaned script cleaner and just mucking about with new mods on minor random quests for a bit - if they crash or are just buggy then delete and revert to an earlier save. I don't even think about this, it's just become second nature with a heavily modded Skyrim, it is frankly the only way to prevent a cool looking but badly done mod from fucking everything up.
Of course just deleting a crap mod that you've paid for is a whole other kettle of fish. Apparently you get a 24 hour grace period where you can get your money back if the mod is buggy or incompatible with anything else you have. What happens when the bugs or incompatibility don't become apparent until a couple of days have passed? SOL?

It's blindingly obvious this was a fucking stupid idea from the outset, nothing more than a money grub by Steam.

Concerning Wet and Cold http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/file ... 663575/#p2

he's used assets/code from SparrowPrince, verteiron, trebtreb, lorelai2009, Omesean, seanbonaker, drsoupiii, Northborn, frankdema, TreasureChest, OG-Jay, tumbajamba, DVAted, Targaryen, Arthmoor, xlwarrior, Slavovitsh, starfis, JackLaVaporiera, nakadi5963, raphou112, and the SKSE team. ... ... ...gave them credit for their work on Nexus...but it's strangely absent here...

Charging money for other peoples hard work, wonder if he's going to split his pathetic 25% with them?

And already there are a bunch of mods available only from NexusMods for free that have been uploaded for sale by people who didn't make them.
This is not going to end well.

Eh, it'll crash and burn. The market for paid mods is likely going to be too tiny for anybody to bother come six months from now.

The creator of Wet and Cold has burnt a lot of bridges, promising a new 2.0 version for ages, then "just a week to go" annnnnndddd ... it's in the Steam pay section. Pulling that bait and switch has lost him any support from the Nexusmods crowd, not even getting into the legality of using other peoples resources and charging for it. At the end of the day all it does is add some visual effects influenced by the weather, certainly not going to affect my gameplay after I've uninstalled it. The rest of the day one releases are similarily non game-changing minor shit.

Plus as I said above only a complete moron installs anything from Steam Workshop.

[PREDATOR490]

Waiting for them to put Animated Prostitution or the highly detailed sex / nude mods on the market just to see the inevitable storm that will create.

Paying for mods - Really stupid.

The only way I see this is being a valid concept is if it becomes total conversion or heavy DLC packages that combine the most popular mods into an official DLC that is tested to work. Paying $5 for a derivative mod that might work and has no basic standard of quality is kinda stupid. This seems like it is going to lead to a massive setback in the mod community of these kinds of games as mods start fighting with one another.
If Mod X does what Mod Y is doing... are we going to start seeing claims to intellectual property which somehow has to pass the sanction of the original game owners ?
Gonna be even more hilarious if someone does a mod like putting Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings etc. into games since that runs into cross IP boundaries.

[salm]

Maybe it is a move partially caused by the Unreal Engine and Unity Engine to become free. Both Engines have stores where creators can download or buy third party content and it has become increasingly easy to create games for individuals in their free time.
Epic and Unity seem to be generating enough money with their online shops that they decided it was worth giving away the Engine for free so I guess Valve and Bethesda saw an opportunity to do something similar.
I mean, making a game in Unreal and making a Mod for Skyrim can be rather similar. You can buy a whole bunch of templates, characters and other stuff and get a framework for a game in Unreal. This might be a bit more complicated than modding Skyrim but mods can be rather complex as well.
So if a good modder could simply make a game in Unreal and sell it for a buck or two why should he be making mods for game he is not allowed to charge any money for?
The 75% cut that valve takes is absurd and shit like 5 dollars for a wet character as well (fortunately, you don´t have to buy it) but in generall I see nothing bad about implementing a system that makes it possible for modders to charge for their work. It probably has to go a couple of iterations until this system works decently if this particular one survives at all but I do think this could be good in the future.

[Purple]

Minecraft has a good model for this. They allow modders to use addfly links when linking to their mods on the official forums. So every download nets the modder add income without charging the downloader anything. And there is no stupid 75% cut either.

[Wild Zontargs]

Minecraft has a good model for this. They allow modders to use addfly links when linking to their mods on the official forums. So every download nets the modder add income without charging the downloader anything. And there is no stupid 75% cut either.

Heck, for people who don't want/trust adfly, there's a rule on the official forums that you must include an ad-free link to the mod. (Most people use the adfly link as a thank-you anyway.)

[salm]

Does anybody know if people who make Minecraft mods can make decent money from these adds or is it just peanuts? If it works, that´s cool but it doesn´t mean that a different model couldn´t work better.
I´m really curious if commercialisation models like this will lead to a certain amount of professional modders.

[Wild Zontargs]

I don't have numbers, but the guy who makes Optifine (major graphical optimizations and added features, very popular) was offered a deal to include the mod in Minecraft. He turned it down because Mojang only wanted the optimizations, not the added features, and he intended to offer the added features in mod form anyway. The money for including the optimizations in Minecraft didn't offset the added work of developing two separate versions of the mod, so I assume he's making non-trivial money off the mod.

The adfly rates vary, but the more popular mods can get millions of downloads per version (as an example, Tinkers Construct gets 300k/month on average), so it adds up quickly.

[TronPaul]

I like the idea of a paid marketplace for mods, but Valve/Steam made some really poor decisions on this implementation. I haven't been following the list of grievances closely, but here's how I might have done it.

• banning and loss of revenue for stealing content from free mods and including it in paid mods
• once a mod version is marked as free it cannot require payment
• The revenue split is 75% for mod creators, 25% Valve and game publisher
• A pay what you want option for free with the same revenue split
• Donation links not allowed, you must use the pay what you want feature

[salm]

Your link sends me to the German version of the Adfly rates and the laguage they use is a bit... I guess there is something lost in translation. But from what I gather is that for every 1000 klicks on the download link within 24 hours the modder gets, for example, 8.23$ if the clicks were from the USA and unique clicks from desktops. Is that correct?

[Flagg]

And with this, Valve has made seedy pay for nude patches, cheats, and trainers game mod sites legitimate, and so the last reason I had for buying non-FPS games on PC that are also on console is gone, so...

[Purple]

Here is what the English version says:

Unique = average amount paid for 1000 visitors in the 24-hour period.

Raw = average amount paid on the 1st advert view for 1000 link views in the 24-hour period.

[Grumman]

I doubt the next ES game will support "unofficial" modding...

You can't stop unofficial modding without destroying both the tools necessary to make the mod in the first place and the market for the game. Mods - free mods - are the reason Bethesda's games are as popular as they are, and putting that content behind a paywall decreases the value of the game.

[TheFeniX]

I mean, making a game in Unreal and making a Mod for Skyrim can be rather similar. You can buy a whole bunch of templates, characters and other stuff and get a framework for a game in Unreal. This might be a bit more complicated than modding Skyrim but mods can be rather complex as well.
So if a good modder could simply make a game in Unreal and sell it for a buck or two why should he be making mods for game he is not allowed to charge any money for?

Because a lot of people do this out of love for the game. The free mod system leads to constant borrowing, mostly done with permission, of other people's hard work, such as SKSE, FNIS, SkyUI and other frameworks that greatly improve the game and the ability to mod it. From what I know, there is literally no way to add animations into Skyrim (outside of replacers) without FNIS because Beth dropped the fucking ball on Skyrim's SDK. So, when money is on the line, there's going to be a lot less incentive to release your assets to other modders for improvements or changes. Just like they don't hand out Havok for free. Actually enabling Havok for things like hairs in Skyrim is just one example of multiple modders coming together just to make something work because they can. So what happens when one of them try and sell the HDT system?

This also further incentives Bethesda's shit QA and general coding. At what point am I going to be paying $3 for a fucking Unofficial Patch when Beth should have bought the code from them in the first place and given it to me for "free" because I bought their broken POS? I can hope they never sell the patches, but there's nothing to stop them from doing so now. Same with SKSE and the other frameworks. The second one of them decides to monetize their version, modding become nothing but buggy and broken DLC: so just like regular DLC except with somehow even worse QA.

I can't even count the number of mods I've downloaded, installed, then removed. If I had to pay even $1 for them, I'd easily be in over $300: that's some micro-transaction level of bullshit. Sure, Steam offers a "grace-period" but the Steamworkshop sucks wind for mod management, valve has said nothing about QA, and the only refunds they offer is Steambucks (so, basically monopoly money).

The only, and I mean only, good thing that could possibly come out of this is most mods go paid and Steam filtering system locks out some of the more "seedy" mods because there are some that are truely fucked up. But still, good things come from perverts. If it wasn't for guys looking for way to make boobs jiggle better, I wouldn't have my Havok enabled Ponytail.

I doubt the next ES game will support "unofficial" modding...

You can't stop unofficial modding without destroying both the tools necessary to make the mod in the first place and the market for the game. Mods - free mods - are the reason Bethesda's games are as popular as they are, and putting that content behind a paywall decreases the value of the game.

The PC version of Skyrim is peanuts to what they made on the console version. It was like 13% of the Skyrim sales. Skyrim was so popular because it's the most cutdown Action/Adventure game out there, looks "decent," and somehow manages to be broken and still incredibly fun. Oh yea, and they marketed the Hell out of the game. I personally wouldn't touch the thing on console, but many millions more did than those on PC.

May have gone up since the console version has run it's course and only Steam versions are likely selling now. Probably why they've finally turned some attention to it. Easy enough to destroy unofficial mods: make the SDK require Steam, force file consistency, overwrite any files not in the users subscribed list. Piracy will be the name of the game for the PC version. NOTE: This is just made ramblings of a paranoid right now. But if they make any decent money off this and enough modders get on board: they have every incentive to lock-out modding sites who don't want in on the action. I like Beth for what they are, but they aren't above fucking customers for an easy payday.

[TheFeniX]

Fore weighs in on FNIS being used for a paid mod:

Chesko's Fishing Mod is now the holder of a dubious record: it's the first paid-for Skyrim mod to be removed from sale.

An early test for Valve's unique policing methods, the removal came off the back of claims Chesko and aqqh — the fishing mod's creators — were profiting from the work of fellow modder Fore without the latter's permisison.

See, the fishing mod used assets from Fore's New Idles in Skyrim — fine in the world of free mods, but not something that's kosher in the world of for-profit modding.

Screengrabs were, of course, grabbed before things went quiet on the Workshop page:

Fucking valve man, seriously: I won't inline the images, but essentially Chesko was valve's little whipping boy for this (which he signed up for) and valve told him "nah, it's cool bro: monetize others people's work because fuck them."

Beth and valve show no matter how little money you stand to make in the process of trying to make more: fuck the little guy.

Forbes: I choose you!

Valve and Bethesda’s announcement of a jointly run paid Skyrim mods store has been met by nothing but fury from fans over the past 24 hours. Even modders, whom the idea is supposed to benefit, are coming out against the idea, which they deem detrimental to the entire community.

It should be good news. Now modders have an official way to get paid through a partnership program when before most were getting nothing and many were squeaking by on a few donations alone. But in practice, Valve/Bethesda’s Skyrim mod store is an absolutely terrible idea for reasons that are already becoming clear even in the first day after launch. Let’s go through the issues fans and modders themselves are bringing up.

The Split is Unreasonable

The modders only take home 25% of the money made from the sale of their mods. The rest is split in some undisclosed way between Valve and Bethesda. As Erik Kain pointed out yesterday, this is well below something like the Apple AAPL +0.27% store, which gives creators at least 70% of the cash. Just 25% seems abysmally low. Even if it’s “better than zero” as proponents will claim, it’s more than a little reminiscent of Nintendo's we-don’t-understand-the-market YouTube policies which forced a revenue share program that most content creators couldn’t be bothered with.

Modders are Friends, Not Food

Mods have kept a game like Skyrim alive for years after many would have otherwise stopped playing. Bethesda is choosing to look at this like “why are these players not giving us more money?” rather than “wow, this is amazing advertising and community building for our franchise!” Modders usually love the games they mod, which is why they spend so much time on their creations. Changing the equation and turning them into employees is going to dishearten many of them, and attract the wrong sort of crowd.

The Wrong Sort of Crowd

A mod store like this has the potential to turn a game like Skyrim from “fun, infinitely modifiable sandbox adventure” to “Guinness World Record holder for most microtransactions.” It will create a flood of modders who aren’t the type of passionate players doing it “for the love of the game,” but rather people trying to reskin a sword and sell it for $5. The game could be overloaded with this kind of crap, and even if it’s all “optional,” it puts a black mark on the entire modding community.

The Legal Questions

Already, one of the paid Skyrim mods has been taken down after one user claimed another user was selling it using animations that he had originally created in his own mod. The mod store seller claimed that Valve actually forbade him from contacting the original animator about using his work because of an NDA about the existence the store. And this is somebody who is actually well-meaning. The “wrong crowd” mentioned above could easily slide in and just start stealing other people’s work left and right and selling it on the store. I’ve already heard of modders taking down their mods rather than let them potentially be stolen and used for paid store offerings. Even if Valve has some sort of report system in place, it’s going to be a headache to sort through justified and unjustified claims based on who iterated off whose work and who has the rights to the original mod and so on and so forth. It’s a nightmare waiting to happen.

Potentially Broken Products

Mods, are by definition, experimental. Though Steam has a 24 hour return policy for mods, so you can send something back (so to speak) if you don’t like it, there doesn’t seem to be anything in place to prevent a modder from selling something to consumers, having it break down the road, and then simply never fixing it, leaving the buyer with a useless piece of software they paid good money for. Most gaming companies don’t do this because they’re large organizations with reputations to uphold. But some modders might not care and be perfectly comfortable with abandoning a mod they can’t be bothered to fix. They and Bethesda and Valve already made their money when they sold it, and the return policy prevents further recompensation, so who cares? Let the consumer rant into the void about it.

Dividing a Community

The Skyrim community has always been a pretty tight group, but now through the introduction of the store, a lot of tension has been created overnight. Fans are looking at modders like this was their idea as an attempt to cash in. Free modders are looking at paid modders as sellouts. Legitimate paid modders are looking at newbie paid modders as opportunists. It’s awful, and only made possible through the introduction of the store. Bethesda had a creative, united community until yesterday, and now there’s tons of infighting, not to mention the rage directed at the company itself.

“Oh Someone Will Just Mod That”

Here’s some fun with theoretical extrapolations of this concept. Let’s say that Bethesda wants to make another Skyrim DLC expansion involving some new order of warriors. They want to make their signature weapon a flail, but the oddly behaving weapon is proving difficult to animate and operate effectively on PC. Under this new system do they A) work really hard to get past the issue and release the flail at launch or B) say “oh the modders have flails, let’s just promote their mod in the store.” Under the old system, Bethesda would have been motivated to make the flail themselves, but under the new one, someone is doing it for them, and they’re taking up to 75% of the revenue for each flail sold. I’m not saying this would for sure be their philosophy going forward, but when a company can charge handily for someone adding extra content into their game, you can bet that the opportunity for exploitation is there.

Honestly, all of these issues were just off the top of my head after glancing through a few forum posts about the store where fans are expressing similar concerns. There are probably many, many more issues no one has even considered yet. The pros are technically “modders get paid, the game maker gets paid,” but past that, there are too many cons to count.

This will prove to be a disaster, and may damage the PC the modding community irreparably if the practice spreads.

"How dare these entitled PC gamers continue to enjoy our game for years. They should be playing ESO by now. Find a way to fleece more money out them!"

I love Forbes: they don't have to pull any punches or kiss any ass. Some of their writers have the most idiotic opinions, but I consistently find articles that say what I'm thinking better than I could.

[PREDATOR490]

Skyrim is an old game which is why some folks are thinking this is a way of testing the waters to see if people will suck it up and shut up before applying it to something like the next big game. The intellectual argument about mod makers getting some reward for their work has merit but the on-going issue is that the system is horrific.

Paying for graphic overhauls / skins / textures - This has been done with DLC easily enough so doing that would probably have went down better but it is beyond stupid that someone can literally put up RUBBISH which is 3 clutter items in a single place in the world up for sale.
The common thing is that official DLC has by nature been tested and since it is coming from the official makers come with an expected level of quality. Steam has no intention of moderating the content of what the workshop is selling so paying for something that might have been stolen from somewhere else or have requirements not mentioned is extremely shady. Which has to be a complete lie in itself because I find it extremely unlikely Steam are going to claim no moderation if someone starts putting up some of the darker mods.
I.E The sex mods / nude mods or the ones that have lots of blood, skimpy clothing or potentially offensive materials.

What happens if someone puts up a Star Wars mod and tries to sell it - Are we going to see Steam start doing what Youtube does with takedown / copyright notices for music and who gets to claim copyright ?

I like the idea of a paid marketplace for mods, but Valve/Steam made some really poor decisions on this implementation. I haven't been following the list of grievances closely, but here's how I might have done it.

• banning and loss of revenue for stealing content from free mods and including it in paid mods
• once a mod version is marked as free it cannot require payment
• The revenue split is 75% for mod creators, 25% Valve and game publisher
• A pay what you want option for free with the same revenue split
• Donation links not allowed, you must use the pay what you want feature

Who gets to decide what is stealing ? - By default every single mod is based on the IP of the original game owner so they can literally pick and choose to take action against any mod team that wont play to their tune. Now that they have a vested money interest in keeping mods restricted, I dont imagine developers will like it if people are making free mod equivalents of what is being paid for. Modders are going to be getting highly insular and less willing to share which is going to cause mod comparability to drop even further.

If the guys who make the foundation mods like SKSE turn around and restrict access to their frameworks - the mod community is going to fall apart for games because without universal frameworks mod compatibility will get worse to the point that using mods is not only extremely unstable but financially unfeasible, especially for games which will be abandoned long before the mod community is done with them.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

It sounds like they should have gone the Apple route and exercised a lot of control, ie. only the best mods that have been vetted for plagiarism get to be endorsed by Valve and Bethsoft as paid content.

[The Vortex Empire]

Seems to me like adding a Patreon-like system of optional donations for modders would make way more sense than the current clusterfuck implementation.

[Lagmonster]

It sounds like they should have gone the Apple route and exercised a lot of control, ie. only the best mods that have been vetted for plagiarism get to be endorsed by Valve and Bethsoft as paid content.

That's a tremendous idea, provided you trust the publisher. Publishers can solicit mods, throw the best together as DLC packages, then sell them and pay a commission to the original authors. It's not as good as free, but it's better than the Anarchy Department currently set up.