Steam Allows Mods to be Sold

[Selena Halcyon]

How is this good for the people creating mods when said people only get a 25% of the cut, in Skyrim's case?
-Some money is better than no money.
How is this good for people creating mods when you can actually support them directly through donations / tip jars / patreon / advertisement / word of mouth / shilling instead of only giving them 25% of your "purchase / donation"?
-They are underutilized. Why would modders from Nexus be jumping to steam if the tips were so great?
How is this good for people creating mods when there is already a growing number of people that are weary or releasing their source codes or any information at all regarding their mods due to fear of having someone steal it and monetize it on Steam?
-If they monetize their mods through steam they protect themselves. The only ones at risk are those releasing small free mods.
How is this good for gamers when Valve holds said creators of mods at no obligation to bring their product up to speed with the latest patch of a game that can potentially break the game?
-That was never the case anyways. If a mod stopped working it stopped working. However, if anything the fact that you have paying customers might leave you more inclined to care about updating. It also means that the second you stop updating you stop getting revenue as no one will buy your mod anymore.
How is this good for gamers when Valve will only refund you in steam wallet credit?
-If you were going to spend it on a game once. You will probably spend it on something in steam eventually anyways. This does not bother me. Try a new mod.
How is this good for gamers when this system can be indefinitely exploited by developers as another form of DLC / Micro-Transactions?
-How? All of that hinges on if modders exist for the game. There are only a handful of games that stand to profit from this. Skyrim is likely the largest. Bethesda also has been solid on DLC outside of a handful of early ones when they were essentially pioneering the craft. Furthermore, they cannot exploit anything. They can profit but there is absolutely nothing to exploit. If a game is incomplete and gamers buy it then feel like they need to buy mods whose fault is that? That would be the gamer for shelling out their cash for an incomplete product. For all the complaints about incomplete games at launch their sales don't seem to be dipping all that much now do they? That's on the gamers not on the companies for profiting.
How is this good for Valve when people are up in arms to the point where they created a mod for horse genitals that sells for almost one hundred bucks on the workshop as a form of protest?
-Valve is making money no? Sounds like it is good for them. If they find a mod to be problematic I'm sure they will more than gladly get rid of it.
How is this good for Valve when they are now liable for copyright suits issued by other companies due to mods using copyrighted material?
-I'm sure that Valve will only open up paid workshops to games which they can organize a deal with. That's just good business.

How is this good for ANYBODY when the bloody mods put on the workshop will suffer the same fate as the workshop and early access items by it having literally ZERO moderation as to what gets in?
-The same way it is still good for games in the workshop. It allows fledgling game designers to make revenue to try and put out there game. Failure to do so while irresponsible and bad happens. It is like investing in a business. Sometimes that business never really gets going. Same thing with investing in early access. One must be frugal and responsible with their spending.

How is this, Jared, any good if you yourself refuse to pay for such mods even though you claim any of this is good for the community?
-Because he gets it. It might not benefit him, but he can see the good for the community at large. In essence, he doesn't feel entitled to content that people put their time and energy into making.

I'm not even going to get into the allegations of a mod having to sell a total of 400$ PER MONTH for the creator to even see their share. The allegations that if a mod sales only 399 dollars and 99 cents Valve [and possible Bethesda] keep everything. The allegations that the 100 dollar minimum sales fee is referring to the amount of money the creator will get from his 25% share and not the entire sales of said mod. The allegations that said creators will only be paid in steam wallet.
-Yeah so much for not getting into it. lol. Allegations are allegations. This entire controversy is going to go away in no time.

Good lord gamers are some of the whiniest people I've ever known. Yet they still shill out tons of dollars into products they're going to complain about incessantly. It is rather maddening to watch.

 

[Sabena Shai]

Another thing to note, people's mouth and money can say two different things. Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 were big examples of where there was outcry against Valve and people trying to boycott it, yet these games managed to sell pretty well. And this trend stretches far beyond video games and is practically in almost any industry. So, I doubt the outcry now will have any impact unless many people truly never buy a mod. And even then, the cost for Bethesda and Valve is negligible enough to where any amount of mod sales is profit.

Also, here's something from a guy that actually made a mod and then sold it. http://garry.tv/2015/04/24/paying-for-mods/?/

Though it being nearly 24 hours since this was implemented, it's starting to be apparent that there are a lot of kinks in Valve's current implementation of Paid Mods. Granted, this is pretty much the first attempt at something like this for a game not made by Valve. Valve allows for community content to be sold on TF2 and it's clear that they mirrored this model for Skyrim.

 

[Yvette Dusong]

-Some money is better than no money.

Then how about we give the content creators the lion share of the sales, at the very bloody least? Because right now, no matter what, they are contractually entitled only to 25% of the sales their product generates while everything else is split between Valve and the developer. Why not instead give the content creators the lion share of the profit for their own bloody creation or in other words, give them 50% of the generated sales while Valve and the developer split the remaining 50%. This way Valve covers their bandwidth cost while also raking in some profit while the developer themselves receive pure profit from this deal. Why not go the whole bloody mile and make this what it's supposed to be? A page dedicated to every and all possible mods and have a donation link in their own personal section if the creator deems it necessary? Bandwidth costs? Fair enough, then give them the lions share of the profit. There is no two way about this, the current split is made entirely to ram a giant shaft up the content creators ass and get away with it.

​

I'm also going to debate one of the allegations in this subsection as well, more precisely the one about the minimum payout. As you can see above, Valve will hold onto the money the product makes INDEFINITELY until it breaks 100 dollar in payout. This is not 100 dollars worth of sales, this is 400 worth of sale. Payout refers to the money the content creator is entitled to receive following this agreement. With the current 25% split the content creator receives, their product must sale a total value of 400 dollars before they are allowed to even see a cent of that money. Most of the mods on the workshop right now are going for an average of 50 cents to one dollar and 50 cents. Now how about you do the math and divide that by 25% and figure out how many bloody sales they must have before they receive a measly 100 dollars.

-They are underutilized. Why would modders from Nexus be jumping to steam if the tips were so great?

Because for one thing, there is blood in the water, both literally and figuratively. If you do not monetize your own mod, you are running the risk of some chump coming around, taking your hard work, maybe editing a line or two of text, changing an insignificant variable, and place it on the workshop himself if not outright just placing your content without any modifications for themselves. This is the reason people are either placing their stuff on the workshop or outright cutting any public ties with the rest of the community when it comes to their content, because they are either afraid some tit will come along and steal their creation for their own profit while they themselves get nothing out of it, or because they are so thoroughly disgusted with this turn of events that they want absolutely nothing to do with it. And do you think this will not have a domino effect at all? The bloody mods people play and enjoy aren't standalone projects, content creators borrow and work together with others, combining their craft to bring together a new mod to life. If one of the more important mods go behind this wall, then say goodbye to a lot of stuff you enjoy, cause it's going to be a bloody free for all out there.

Mods will either die or content creators will have an even harder time making money because they will have to share the sales of their creation with their collaborators as well now, which will only reduce their profit margins, which will only make it harder for them to get paid, which will only line more money into Valve's pockets as well as those of the developer. So now we have literally driven the dagger of paranoia and greed into what is commonly known as a tight-knit and extremely amicable community because people are sick and tired of assholes and don't want to deal with them.

But that ain't all! Oh no, it ain't that bloody simple, it never is. Bethesda, much like Blizzard, has the rights to your bloody content. If you make something in their engine, it is by law their own now. So if the content creators themselves don't attempt to monetize their creation using the workshop, Valve and Bethesda can simply step in and monetize it themselves, any attempt to fight this in the court of law would simply be overwhelmed by the law department and the lawyer brigades of Zenimax and Bethesda to the point where the content creators themselves will never stand a chance. Steam also has a damn monopoly on this market because it has gone without real competition for too long and can downright stop you from using pirated versions of mods on the games you buy using their system.

We have reached the point where we are literally forced to pirate a bloody mod, no matter how insignificant or crap it is. Whether the developer of said mod puts it out on the internet himself doesn't even matter as it will still be considered a pirate in the eyes of Valve's law department and they will punish you if they catch you.

-If they monetize their mods through steam they protect themselves. The only ones at risk are those releasing small free mods.

See above, this is practically a lose-lose scenario for the content creators.

-That was never the case anyways. If a mod stopped working it stopped working. However, if anything the fact that you have paying customers might leave you more inclined to care about updating. It also means that the second you stop updating you stop getting revenue as no one will buy your mod anymore.

Because having paying customers worked so well for a lot of content related to the video games industry, didn't it? Let me just dig up a few examples here where having paying customers meant jack :

• Double-Fine and it's 3.3 million blunder of a game that had several runs for donation past it's original Kickstarter, which went over budget, was late, only released half of the promised game, and had tried to raise more money for the other half
• Double-Fine and Space Base DF9.
• Project Zomboid where the developers tried to pull a fast one by claiming their stuff got stolen and they had no backup of any kind
• Early Access in general
• The Greenlight system in general.

In the current system it's so bloody hard to actually see your money it's a downright joke. The major difference between how it was one week ago and how it will be from now on unless this decision is reverted is that you are now stuck with a mod that doesn't work anymore that you paid actual money for. Valve is in no way, shape, or form required to give you a refund past the original 24 hours purchase period. In other words, congratulations on a bunch of wasted money as the majority of stuff you see on the workshop are people trying to cash in on this stuff without properly reading the terms and agreements. They have dollar signs in their eyes or they see the approaching demise of what they once knew and are trying to save as much of their work as possible.

-If you were going to spend it on a game once. You will probably spend it on something in steam eventually anyways. This does not bother me. Try a new mod.

As stated above, if the 24 hour purchase period expires, you will not even get a refund. And that's not even the issue with this. The major and most important issue with this whole subsection is that, no matter what, Valve now has your money and is not going to give it back to you. You will either be stuck with a mod that will no longer work and you are never going to see a refund for, or you will be stuck with steam wallet credit which can only be used on steam's store to buy more of their stuff. This means that if you demand a refund for something, Valve no longer gets 25% of your purchase, they now receive 100% of your purchase while having their legal bases secured. This has always been a problem with Steam, this is not something new, and this recent debacle only brings more attention to this horrendous facet of the system.

-How? All of that hinges on if modders exist for the game. There are only a handful of games that stand to profit from this. Skyrim is likely the largest. Bethesda also has been solid on DLC outside of a handful of early ones when they were essentially pioneering the craft. Furthermore, they cannot exploit anything. They can profit but there is absolutely nothing to exploit. If a game is incomplete and gamers buy it then feel like they need to buy mods whose fault is that? That would be the gamer for shelling out their cash for an incomplete product. For all the complaints about incomplete games at launch their sales don't seem to be dipping all that much now do they? That's on the gamers not on the companies for profiting.

I'll start with how this can be exploited. Bethesda games are being brought because of the massive modding community backing each and every single one of their titles, making sure game-breaking or annoying bugs are fixed in a more timely manner than the developer can achieve as well as add new and interesting content to the games. The games made by Bethesda have always been diamonds in the rough that required the communities help to properly shine. They are now making said community eat itself from within so that they see an even bigger profit in revenue from selling mods, which they own according to their legal terms.

Early Access and Day One DLC is already a tumor on many games that is pushed by many developers, what makes you think they won't continue to strip down the games content for as much as they while still selling it at full price? What makes you think they won't put out mods made by the development team themselves that either fixes certain issues that were supposed to be fixed before shipping or restore content that was cut for the sole purpose of making more money through selling mods? Obsidian is one company that has released developer made mods to fix some of the issues they faced in the creation of their games due to budget / time constraints. What makes you think others won't try to profit off of this and exploit the good will of the consumer base even more? Are we forgetting the amount of retards that inhabit this world that buy into Day One DLC and Early Access for the detriment of the industry as a whole? Do you think this people fething learn? This constant attempts at nickle and dime-ing retards won't bring this whole house of cards down sooner than later to the benefit of no one and the detriment of everybody.

-Valve is making money no? Sounds like it is good for them. If they find a mod to be problematic I'm sure they will more than gladly get rid of it.

Not after they enter a ton of legal battles due to copyright issues they won't, because the workshop for mods is without any proper quality control or moderation, much like Greenlight or Early Access. This is short-term gain for medium and long-term financial and reputation loss.

-Because he gets it. It might not benefit him, but he can see the good for the community at large. In essence, he doesn't feel entitled to content that people put their time and energy into making.

Put your goddamn money where your mouth is. Early Access and Greenlight have shown there is no overall increase in quality of good games or trustworthy developers, only a meteoric rise in con artist's and gullible retards that have more money that common sense. Much like those two, this will only work against the community at large and against Valve as well. And entitled, fething entitled? Do you even know why the bloody hell mods are made for, how the community itself works, or the sheer destruction this whole thing is doing to the community?

-Yeah so much for not getting into it. lol. Allegations are allegations. This entire controversy is going to go away in no time.

I have answered and proven all of the allegations I made in the first subsection of this post, with the exception of content creators being paid in Steam Wallet Credits. The money will be sent to their bank, if they ever manage to break 400 dollars in sales.

Good lord gamers are some of the whiniest people I've ever known. Yet they still shill out tons of dollars into products they're going to complain about incessantly. It is rather maddening to watch.

Go ahead and call me a tinfoil conspiracy twat, an entitled piss baby, a petulant manchild, or any other buzzwords you like to throw around. I'm sure it does wonders for your argument you insufferable tit.

[member="Selena Halcyon"]

 

[Jsc]

Regulation is going to be impossible and Piracy will increase as pay walls go up. Anybody heard of *HelloSanta* wanting to keep her Skyrim/Skysims hair mods private? Yeahhh. That didn't go so well either. Mods are free and accessible because the Tech-savvy Community laughs at our mediums of control.

That said. I'd pay for mods like I pay for apps. No problem.

 

[Yvette Dusong]

[member="Jay Scott Clark"]

Well I bloody well hope you enjoy seeing this be transformed into the same crap that are the mobile app store games, complete with adds and micro-transactions then, cause it's damn well happening.

 

[Jsc]

[member="Yvette Dusong"]

~ It's the circle of life ~

 

[Yvette Dusong]

[member="Jay Scott Clark"]

Your willingness to accept it disgusts me to the very core while also allowing me to use this following pic to describe my feelings towards you.

 

[Jsc]

[member="Yvette Dusong"]

My avatar.
Your avatar.

Lingerie pillow-wrestling-sexytime. Let's do this !?maybe?

#ShyGurl​

#LipBite​

#Tease​

 

[Selena Halcyon]

Go ahead and call me a tinfoil conspiracy twat, an entitled piss baby, a petulant manchild, or any other buzzwords you like to throw around. I'm sure it does wonders for your argument you insufferable tit.

All I said was you're whiney, which you are in fact being. You're the one engaging in ad hominem.

 

[Yvette Dusong]

[member="Selena Halcyon"]

You engaged it in first with your sweeping generalization comment which practically shows you have no idea what the bloody hell this means for the modding community. Feel free to continue to debate any other point I made instead of focusing entirely on the exchange of insults and deem yourself the victor / correct in this debate by ignoring everything in favor of focusing on the banter.

 

[Selena Halcyon]

Insults are hardly banter. However, I got through about a third of your post before I realized what an ungodly wall of text it was. Upon that realization I decided this was certainly not worth my time. I was however intrigued to see how you'd comment to my last line so I looked at that. The reality is you are far more passionate than I am about this issue. I have not desire to get into some lengthy discussion about this because I quite frankly do not have a problem with the issue, and I am not going to persuade you otherwise. What I can say is that a lot of your anger and passion is completely wasted because paid mods aren't going to go away now that the trend has started. So be angry all you want, but that's only going to shorten your life. So no, I do not consider myself some "victor", I consider this discussion as ultimately without merit. Therefore, I'm resigning from it.

 

[Yvette Dusong]

[member="Selena Halcyon"]

Resorting to calling your opposition "whiny" and making sweeping generalizations of an entire demographic, each with it's various facets and groups, is also an insult.

But I digress, believe what you wish to believe as long as it helps you sleep at night hon, this debate is over then.

 

[Victor Thrash]

Why would modders from Nexus be jumping to steam if the tips were so great?

Actually...a lot of modders do it for free because of the community. In fact, the big names that steam dropped on their list of DLC mods (Chesko and Isoku) are/were getting metaphorically lynched by the community. People have been telling them to pull content and resources out of their mods, endorsements have been taken back and their overall credibility on the nexus and the skyrim modding community has fallen, (though arguably Chesko saved himself by saying he was still going to update and put out his mods for free on the nexus and this was basically for people who don't trust NMM).

The only ones at risk are those releasing small free mods.

Ehhhh. Chesko is a huge name that said he/she will continue putting up free content even if they are selling it on steam. There are a LOT of huge overhauls on the nexus that have refused to use the steam workshop, even before this.

While I don't agree with paying for mods, and never will (I'll keep my game as it is with no updates if I have to) I'm glad at least one modder has said they will stay faithful to their nexus supporters.

Its kind of a dick move to take one of the biggest immersion mods on the nexus update it and sell it but leave all the other people that had been following for years behind with nothing but a potentially broken game. Also...modders drop off the grid pretty often. And you only get refunds 24hrs after purchase and with no way to control the modders and keep the mods up to date...Things could get bad real fast.

I don't think many more modders will put their content up there anyways so I'm not worried. Mostly because I hope people aren't stupid enough to pay for something that has no guarantee and could potentially destroy a game. It would be like buying drugs that are already harmful to your body, knowing full well that it could be laced with something.

 

[Yvette Dusong]

Mostly because I hope people aren't stupid

People are stupid enough unfortunately. Valve and Bethesda had made an approximate 7000 dollars in the first 24 hour span of sales while the content creators made around 600 that actually got paid out. I'm unsure how much of that is false sales from Valve and Bethesda and how many are genuine, especially with the wave of shill accounts created recently just doing positive reviews for the mod workshop. Thankfully the big names are starting to realize the absolute legal mess they just stepped into like a pack of starving hyenas and are now reading the fine print on the contract, at the very least. Any and all "lynching" they received for this is deserved, it's like watching someone jump off a bridge because he got promised 10 bucks by a complete and total stranger.

 

[Sabena Shai]

Actually...a lot of modders do it for free because of the community.

Modders had to mod for free because it was illegal to actually sell their mods since Bethesda did not have an official means of doing so. Modding for Skyrim required the use of copyrighted resources within the finished product - hence why it would have been illegal to do so. Those that already sold their mods had to do so behind closed, private sites that were not affiliated with major distributors such as Nexus and Steam Workshop.

So now that Bethesda and Steam have set up a the legal means to sell one's mod, it's clear that modders aren't just modding out of the goodness of their heart and that if they could monetize it they would.

 

[Yvette Dusong]

[member="Sabena Shai"]

Then please explain the past decade and a half of mods created that were in no way going to be sold due to backlash from the developers, the publishers, and whatever other third party that held a copyright over the content in their creation. This is not something that had been in the works for years, the steam workshop for mods literally popped up overnight. Mods always were created by fans of the series as a passion or a hobby, one that allowed them to get familiarized with the engine of the game and have something to place on their CV if said content was good enough, or as a means to become famous / popular on certain internet communities regarding said games or mod communities.

Money was never the main focus or appeal of creating content for games you love, doubly so if we use Selena's excuse of donation not being nearly enough money / being less than 25% of the paycut they currently receive from Valve.

I will say this again because it seems it's a really hard concept to grasp. Bethesda owns the mods put forth by the community, much like Blizzard owns every custom map created with WC3 and SC2. It's part of the terms and agreement. If the creators themselves refuse to monetize, Bethesda and Valve will cut them out of the deal and do it themselves because they have the legal authority. The reason this did not happen so far was because of the huge backlash they rightfully expected and the death of the modding community, the sole reason their games are as popular as they are. Just as well, if the creators themselves don't monetize, people are allowed to come and steal their work and repackage it as their own and Valve will allow it. So you either monetize, or someone else profits off your work or Bethesda takes all the money themselves.

 

[Sabena Shai]

Then please explain the past decade and a half of mods created that were in no way going to be sold due to backlash from the developers, the publishers, and whatever other third party that held a copyright over the content in their creation.

As I said, there were no legal means to sell one's mod as a product. Filefront, Fileplanet, Nexus, and other sites that hosted mods over the years never successfully managed to set up paid mod system - whether out of lack of trying or publisher reluctance, I'm not sure. However, these platforms monetized off of mods anyway through the use of premium download speeds / priority - and I don't know how much of this money never made it to modders.

Mods always were created by fans of the series as a passion or a hobby

And it would be great to make money off of my passions or hobbies. Making money and being passionate about one's work isn't mutually exclusive, nor should it be wrong. In fact, it would be ideal if everyone could achieve that.

 

[Yvette Dusong]

[member="Sabena Shai"]

The creators themselves didn't get squat off the premium download and membership stuff on the file sharing sites, plus the amount of people that actually bothered to get such subscriptions were far and few in between. The major revenue source of those sites were clicks and ad revenue due to the user base. The money content creators made off of their mods were entirely from donations, and more recently patreon, two services where they see near 100% of the money minus the transaction fee's of said services.

As for the second statement, true, it would be nice if everybody could make money off of stuff they enjoy. The issue is, is that stuff worth money? Is a sword recolor worth the money if all they do is change a few meshes here and there? Is adding meaningless junk that is neither good nor entertaining worth the money? Is me picking my nose worth the money? The stuff that was high quality and deserved to be supported received money in the form of donations because, whether people want to believe it or not, the modding community and those partaking in it value quality work and almost everybody agrees that certain creators deserve some bucks for their hard work.

But with Steam, that ain't happening. They get 25% of the profit, and only if their item sells a total amount of 400 dollars since the content creators are only paid when they attain their own personal payout quota of 100 dollars. With steam, the market is flooded by a lot of crap mods now that aren't even worth the 50 cents they are asking for in a bid to sell out and POTENTIALLY, and this is the key word here, POTENTIALLY get some money. Again, do the math of how many units need to be sold at 50 cents a piece to reach 400 dollars and then see if the majority of mods will be bought that many times.

The large download numbers for mods were always because they were free and you lost nothing by trying them out except a few minutes of your day. Now, mods are going behind a payment wall and the numbers will drop dramatically. Then there's the issue of Valve and Bethesda wanting to monetize it whether the creator themselves want to or not, to the point where they allow people to sell others mods on the workshop if the creator themselves don't get to it first, while also being able to cut them out of the deal completely.

Content Creators deserve some reward for their work, but only if said work is of a good enough quality to deserve earning a reward [Subjective] and if the method of rewarding them sees to it that they receive the lion share of your payment [Objective]. The first rarely happens while the second is never going to happen with the current mod workshop.

Also another thing to note is that Valve did not allow you to check reviews for mods last night if you didn't already bought them. I am unsure if this is still active but the action itself is inexcusable.

 

[Sabena Shai]

The money content creators made off of their mods were entirely from donations, and more recently patreon, two services where they see near 100% of the money minus the transaction fee's of said services.

25% of $400 is greater than 100% of $50. Plus, donations aren't mutually exclusive from selling one's mod. Those that sell on Steam Workshop are assuming there will be sufficiently more people paying for the mod.

The fact Chesko (who probably has more donation support than the vast majority of Skyrim modders) initially felt compelled to make the switch to the paid model is very indicative of how much these modders can actually rely on donations for monetary support.

The issue is, is that stuff worth money?

Anything can be worth money to someone. The question a seller has to ask is how much are people willing to pay for said item.

One could then go really crazy and use metrics of past sales to get an ideal margin of profit based on the cost of the item (When does the price become too high and sales drop? When does the price become too low and there's no profit?). These are questions a modder has to find the answers to if he/she wants to sell a mod.

And for consumers, they just have to decide whether or not it's worth the money via their wallet. Steam already has an option to "Pay what you want" so that someone can pay as little as $0.25 to $99 for a mod. Not sure if there's a $0.00 option that a modder can enable, which modders like Gopher want to know before jumping ship as well.

 

[Yvette Dusong]

25% of $400 is greater than 100% of $50.

Only if they reach those 400 dollars to begin with. If they fail to hit that total sales quota, then the creator will not see any money coming his way from either Valve or Bethesda. Valve has the right to keep the creators cut of the profit indefinitely if they fail to meet the sales target which, again, is very possible. This is by no means a steady source of income in any conceivable way. For reference sake, below is an approximation of how much money each individual party has made after the first 24 hours of the whole mess going online by some simple math involving the number of subscribers and the minimum purchase price for items.

​

Nearly 6000 dollars in possible revenue. Looks like much but the number is way lower due to simple marketing techniques. There have been numerous accounts at level zero, with one game at minimum and a handful at most, with barely any playtime at all and with one review at most. All of them praising Skyrim and the mod workshop, accounts which are also subscribed to numerous mods in an attempt to inflate their numbers. So this number will go down significantly. How much, I am unable to say because Valve is a private company and as such does not require to make their profit public. But even, if we were to assume this chart was 100% factually correct for the first 24 hours after the workshop went online, this is a big issue.

There are currently 17 pages on the steam workshop for paid mods with 30 submissions a piece. Doing the math, this means there are currently 510 paid mods on the steam workshop, with many more still undergoing approval as some are being pulled off the regular file sharing sites. I am not going to go through each and every one to number the actual amount of different creators or collaborations because I simply lack the time at the moment, but just doing an approximation, only 6 of those content creators had been paid while many more have failed to get anywhere near the required quota to receive their payout. That 744 dollars and 27 cents are Valve's indefinitely, until more sales happen. And if we are to use this thread as anecdotal evidence, that won't happen as even the supporters of such a move refuse to pay money for mods. In other words, Valve took the lions share, not Bethesda or the content creators.

The fact Chesko (who probably has more donation support than the vast majority of Skyrim modders) initially felt compelled to make the switch to the paid model is very indicative of how much these modders can actually rely on donations for monetary support.

Chesko, the guy who had to take some of his content off due to DMCA complaints from other authors who were not credited in his mod for creating the foundation for his mod. Mods are a complex series of intertwined content made by numerous people through the years. So they either take everything for themselves and simply destabilize the community as people will jump at one another to protect their work while Valve and Bethesda continue to profit off of it anyway, or all the modders band together under one collaboration and are forced to share their 25% amongst themselves. They only get paid when, individually, they manage to rake in 100 dollars in payout with their even more reduced share of the profits.

And once again, I will invoke the same stuff I said before, modding was never about making a steady stream of income to support yourself with. That's pure stupidity. To certain creators deserve to get paid for their work, like the makers of SkyUI? Definitely. Should they expect to make a living off of this? Their bloody retarded then.

Anything can be worth money to someone. The question a seller has to ask is how much are people willing to pay for said item.

The stuff listed above can show that whatever money there is in this whole debacle, insignificant as it is [Seriously, 6000 dollars is nothing in this industry], it is at the expense of content creators and is made to hurt them for the profit of Valve and the developers. They are getting almost nothing out of this but scraps and pennies while also systematically destroying the modding community over the entire un-moderated mess that is the rush for steam workshop.

Not sure if there's a $0.00 option that a modder can enable

There isn't for the paid mod section. The lowest I saw was around 50 cents. If you want it to be for free, you put it on the free section of the workshop or upload it to other file sharing sites, at which point others are allowed to steal and plagiarize your work and put it for sale up themselves to make money off of your work, or Valve and Bethesda cash in on your work themselves and cut out the middle man.

Also, again, major issue. Refunds are only in Steam Wallet Credit. This is something that has plagued Steam for years. No matter what, Valve will get your money if you touch this stuff. The only question is if they get 25% or if they get 100% after you issue a refund.