[lsaferite]

Bethesda did get something. They got my purchase of the original game plus all of the DLCs. All at initial sale prices to boot.

Do they deserve more than that?

[yebyen]

I don't know about deserve, but if you want to talk about incentives for behavior, you really can't go wrong with something that provides both "increased sales volume and lifetime" and "an ongoing share of the grosses".

If you want game developers to promote a helpful environment for mod developers, grab some money and pay them something out of it. Definitely!