By now most if not all of us have heard about the Steam Workshop’s new initiative to let modders charge for their mods. Like a lot of things, it has both good sides and some not so good sides but the Internet has largely reacted negatively. Yesterday Gabe Newell himself, head of Valve, took to Reddit to answer questions that users might have about the paid mods.

What we can gather from the AMA is that Newell believes in the modding community of Steam and wants to see them get paid fairly for work that in some cases is extremely well-made and might as well be called game development in its own right. And I’m pretty sure that this is a sentiment that we can agree is a good one. He said that “With the Steam workshop, we’ve already reached the point where the community is paying their favorite contributors more than they would make if they worked at a traditional game developer. We see this as a really good step… The option of MOD developers getting paid seemed like a good extension of that.”

Tackling some issues people could see arising Newell stated that Steam will not demand exclusivity of mods calling such practices “basically a financial leveraging strategy that creates short term market distortion and long term crying.” He also said that he was confident that the community’s policing along with Valve’s own would crack down on people trying to make money off mods that they had stolen off another modder.

Some people also noticed that people speaking about the paid mods on Steam were getting banned or having discussions removed. When presented with this information Newell said that if Valve was doing that it was “stupid” and he would get it to stop, noting that such tactics don’t really work anyway in getting people to stop talking about topics.

I personally can see what Valve is going for, I really can. This has the potential to be a great thing, but knowing that Valve is not going to be too hands-on (no matter what was said about policing for stolen mods) still gives me a little cause for concern.

I, like everyone else, can only wait and see what will result.

A few days ago Valve announced that they were planning to make an update to the Steam Workshop to allow modders to make money from their mods, with the first game to feature this being Skyrim. Needless to say the Internet is divided on the issue, for different reasons. I personally have concerns about the fact that it’s regulated by the users of Steam rather than Valve themselves.

However, some are a little bit more creative and… blatant about how they feel about the new system. Most people against it have complained, debated the pros and cons with friends or even signed the petition that’s going around (which has already reached over 101k signatures at time of writing). Two users have teamed up though to make a protest mod. Really.

Created by users Fuck Valve and Cuscino, the mod is called ‘No more imperials‘ and does just as it says. It eliminates all the Imperials from the game, which kind of makes it difficult to do very much of… well, ANYTHING in the game. Which is the point actually.

The description on the mod’s Workshop page reads: “This mod removes every imperial from the game, effectively breaking the game, just like how valve broke the modding community.” Funnily enough there’s also a banner on the page noting that the mod is ‘incompatible’ with the game of Skyrim right now.

The mod has gotten a lot of five-star ratings from people even though it hasn’t been downloaded an awful lot (well, would you download a mod that is meant to break your game?). This has pushed it to the top of the popular mods list and gotten it a good amount of attention. Which again, I suppose was the point.

Never let it be said that the Internet can’t be creative in their unquestionable dislike of an unpopular change to something they love.

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.

Ubisoft has brought us another entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Set in China during the Ming Dynasty, it follows the adventures of a female assassin as she fights to recover a box given to her by Ezio Auditore. So, how did the series make the transition from 3D to 2D?

Watch below to find out!

Oh LucasFilms. The company that loves to tinker with it’s own franchise until it resembles a 70 year old celebrity thats gone through so many plastic surgeries her face no longer moves. In it’s latest move all Star Wars games have been declared non-canon. This means that some great games, such as Knights Of The Old Republic have been removed from the timeline, as well as some not so stellar entries such as Super Bombad Racing.

While I might not be a huge fan of all the Star Wars games, this does remove a lot of the punch of certain story moments from the older games. And, of course, it causes concern for the future games that may be tied to the series. LucasFilms has set up a “story group” that will oversee all entries into the expanded universe in the future to ensure it fits into the canon. A prime example of this would be the new Battlefront game being developed by DICE. While it’s nice that this will mean all titles will have LucasFilm’s seal of approval, it also means that game developers are going to be more limited. What makes for a great movie, or great canon may not necessarily be what makes for a great game.

On another note, even though the games are no longer canon, some of them are now considered part of the ‘Legends’ content, meaning that they could potentially be used in some facet later on. In the end, it remains to be seen what the ‘story group’ will do, but part of me isn’t convinced that it will be a good thing. Then again, neither was Jar-Jar Binks, and we still haven’t managed to get him retconned.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments!