[fiblye]

Most of the money wasn't even going to the modders. With AAA companies increasingly putting out broken/unfinished games and modders making unofficial patches, it's ridiculous to be rewarding the publisher with most of the money and not the modder.

I think the biggest problem most people had was that they forecasted Steam's mod marketplace as being swamped with garbage mods that offered no real value and were nothing more than a quick cash grab. This would result in the modding community becoming a race to the bottom as modding became less of a hobby of passion, and more of a trash market. Looking at what's been greenlit on Steam lately, seeing the garbage that's been flooding the mobile phone market these past few years, and witnessing the bullshit DLC is these days, I don't think those predictions would be too far off.

The low barrier to entry also opened up the opportunity for people to rip existing free mods and sell them on Steam, hoping to cash out before they got pulled.

I don't think the complaints were at all hollow and plenty of high quality mods exist without paying 45% to the publisher + tip to Valve.

[Lewton]

I feel like your reply should be a top level post.

I don't mind the idea of mod creators earning money from modding. But the thought that Bethesda would be profiting off of releasing broken games rubs me the wrong way real bad.

[UK-AL]

Its relatively easy filter out good and crap mods. That's what markets are good at. Good ones will rise to the top and become best sellers, and bad ones will flop.