Valve changes its modding policy to allow devs to charge for Steam Workshop Mods causing a community uproar

There are a long list of advantages to gaming on a PC but one of the best is being able so mod many of your favorite games. Mods can allow the community to come together to fix a broken game, add hours of new content, or almost turn it into a new game altogether. Games like Skyrim have shown us how far and how crazy the modding community can be with a game they love. What makes game mods so amazing though is that they’re done for free, the most creators ever ask for is a small donation.

The people behind these mods often pour hundreds of hours into development simply for the love of the game or to gain recognition in the community around it. Now one of the largest modding communities in the industry is about to change all that. Valve has announced that they’ve changed their policy to allow developers to charge for mods related to their game. The new policy will start with Skyrim, the Steam Workshop’s most heavily modded game.

Valve’s Tom Bui opened up on their reasoning behind the change that’s left the community divided on the entire issue:

“We think this is a great opportunity to help support the incredible creative work being done by mod makers in the Steam Workshop. User generated content is an increasingly significant component of many games, and opening new avenues to help financially support those contributors via Steam Workshop will help drive the level of UGC to new heights.”

Its great to see Valve trying to increase their support of the modding community; helping them earn money for all the time they’ve spent creating our favorite mods. The only problem is that they’re taking something that’s always been free and putting it behind paywall. It’s only natural that only a small portion of the community is willing to support the change. The rest of the community has gone into an absolute uproar starting a petition to have the policy reversed which has already received 4,000 signatures.

Naturally, Valve doesn’t have to change the policy no matter how many signatures the petition gets. Instead of trying to force the policy to be reversed they should focus on how to keep modders accountable. Before if you downloaded a mod that failed to work you could simply uninstall it. What happens when you buy a mod that doesn’t work out? Can you rely on the creator not to scam people? Valve’s response to those questions is that users can be refunded in 24 hours but that doesn’t offer any real guarantee.

If the past is any indication the PC gaming community will simply find a way to work around the changes. Creating alternate versions of mods that have been put behind a paywall or leave the Steam Workshop and find their mods elsewhere. There are certainly options out there for them including the Nexus, that offers many of the same mods as the Steam Workshop. Only time will tell if Valve will keep the change in place or crack from the pressure from the community and reverse it.