In a somewhat unexpected move, Valve have made a major change to their Steam Workshop. Now modders have the option to charge for the mods they make for games, in a market that will be open and unregulated by Valve or at least in the case of the first game to have it added for, the game’s developers themselves.

And if the thought of that is concerning you, you’re not the only one…

Valve’s Tom Bui stated that they see the change as a great way to support the Steam community’s modders, saying that user generated content was “an increasingly significant component of many games” and that financially supporting these people would help it reach new heights.

The first game to have support is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim which now has a handful of paid mods available for it, with prices starting from 30 cents. The Workshop’s interface is largely the same for choosing the mods, but you can now filter to show only free or paid mods if you want to narrow your search field. Mod makers can set whatever price they like for the mods, and keeping in mind that 75% of the cost goes to Valve expect prices to be set higher for the mod makers who aim to make this a significant revenue of income for themselves.

Personally hearing about this has set a lot of warnings ringing in my head. An open, uncurated market sounds good in theory but remember this is Steam we’re talking about. Valve have been very hands-off with a lot of their processes and seen them become a good place for scammers to exploit gamers before they finally stepped in with some rules to limit this.

Granted, there is a Steam Workshop refund policy in place to help protect against this but the requests must be sent in within 24 hours of purchase. And that’s really not a lot of time in the scheme of things.

I love the idea of supporting modders of games. As an avid Minecraft player I am well aware of how much better a good modder can make a video game, and modders deserve all the support they can get. I’m just afraid that Valve’s ‘hands-off’ policy might end up making this new Workshop feature a bit of a mess if it’s not properly managed.