Paid mods pulled from Steam Workshop, purchases to be refunded

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Steam Workshop’s controversial new paid mods feature has been axed in response to community feedback, Valve has announced.

“We’re going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop. For anyone who spent money on a mod, we’ll be refunding you the complete amount,” Valve wrote in a Steam Community post.

“We talked to the team at Bethesda and they agree.

“We’ve done this because it’s clear we didn’t understand exactly what we were doing. We’ve been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they’ve been received well. It’s obvious now that this case is different.”

Valve said its main goal with the feature was to allow mod makers to work on their creations full time if that was their wish, and to encourage better support for mod users.

“We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free and paid. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it,” Valve said.

“But we underestimated the differences between our previously successful revenue sharing models, and the addition of paid mods to Skyrim’s workshop. We understand our own game’s communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating.”

Valve said it missed the mark “pretty badly”, but that there’s a “useful feature” in there somewhere. It’ll be looking at further feedback if you want to keep talking about it.

Bethesda also issued a short statement on the matter.

“After discussion with Valve, and listening to our community, paid mods are being removed from Steam Workshop. Even though we had the best intentions, the feedback has been clear – this is not a feature you want,” the developer said.

“Your support means everything to us, and we hear you.”

Posted: Apr 27, 2015 9:12 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: http://www.vg247.com/2015/04/28/paid-mods-steam-workshop-canned-cancelled-pulled-bethesda-valve/

Comments

BossHaugPosted: Tue. Apr 28, 2015

Suck it gaben and/or valve

GT-RPosted: Tue. Apr 28, 2015

Good. I have no problem donating to a content creator that actually makes GOOD content. Truth be told though most of the content is pretty shit. Being forced to pay for a mod made by a third party is no different than DLC except without support. I don't think anyone wants that.

MushroomElmPosted: Tue. Apr 28, 2015

DeluxeHazard I would understand why the community would want to remove paid mods but for the creators this must suck, especially, for the ones that make very popular mods.

Please. They're modders. I understand why you feel they deserve the money, which in some sense they do. But they WILLING came out and did this for FREE in the start. There are ways to go about by selling these types of things if they really wanted to.

Either way, if people feel they deserve payment then they should join an actual Dev studio and create a game. Most of the people who do this stuff could actually pull $60 from my pocket on a game if they wanted to. But not for add-ons. We've already got games like Destiny where you start with 10 missions and have to pay for the rest. We don't need this too.

bsmPosted: Mon. Apr 27, 2015

It actually surprises me how Valve listened and backflipped on their idea, good call..

DeluxeHazardPosted: Mon. Apr 27, 2015

I would understand why the community would want to remove paid mods but for the creators this must suck, especially, for the ones that make very popular mods.

TaigaAisakaPosted: Mon. Apr 27, 2015

Not surprised really. Reddit, 4Chan, hell, Steam Forums users were in a pretty big uproar behind them adding payable mods into Steam. Kinda figured it would be a matter of time before Steam removed that whole feature.