Petition To Stop Paid Mods On Steam Workshop Reaches 37K Signatures

A petition on Change.org against Valve and Bethesda’s announcement to allow modders to sell their content on Steam Workshop has received a lot of support since yesterday.

The decision has been met with mixed support. One section of the modding and gaming community doesn’t see this decision as a bad thing, while others, modders included, see the selling of mods as detrimental to the industry. The petition, which is seeking 50,000 signatures, is over halfway to its goal in simply 24 hours of going live. As of the publication of this piece, the petition has garnered 37,000 supports, and the number is growing.

While many thought modders themselves would be universally accepting of the new policy, many creators on the Steam Workshop spoke out yesterday against the practice. While being paid for mods is nothing new, one only has to look at the Player Studio from Daybreak Game Company (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) to see that selling mods is a practice that is long standing. But the vast majority of player created content, for any game, has been given away for free to its players.

Many are upset about the revenue split between modder, Steam, and Bethesda. According to the Steam Workshop content creator page, modders retain 25 percent of the revenue gained by the mod. The other 75 percent goes to Valve and Bethesda. Many see this split as unreasonable, and many are calling for a more fair split of the money. Forbes points out that the revenue split is less than those who create content for Apple, as app developers see at least 70 percent of the revenue garnered by sales.

Many who have signed the petition have pointed out that mods have been free for so long that it makes no sense to charge for them now. Some are calling out Valve for turning the Steam Workshop into a haven for microtransactions. Others wonder what this could do to NexusMods, a modding community site run completely on ad revenue. Already some modders have brought the full versions of their mod to the Steam Workshop and are charging for it (and has since been taken down), while maintaining the free version on Nexus.

Not everyone is against the practice, however. In a post on PC Gamer, the author argues that paid mods won’t destroy PC modding, and in fact may make them better. Regardless of the stance, it’s safe to say that many users will be talking about this decision, and Valve’s reaction, in the months to come.

Are you a fan of paid mods on Steam Workshop? Sound off in the comments below.

[Image via Change.org, Gamepur]