"Pay what you want"

The first title to take advantage of this feature is none other than The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which already had more than 25,000 free mods on the Workshop. Now, it also has 18 pay, with rates between 0.23 suggested for a new sword and 5.49 euros for a mod adding 80 spells in the game.

The notion of suggested tariff is very important here, since modders can choose to offer their creations with an economic model type "pay what you want", where players can freely set the amount they wish to pay for a particular product. The creators of the 18 mods available since yesterday have also all chose this option to monetize their content.

The initiative is already debate

Several questions were raised by the gaming community with the launch of this feature. The first being that the product has no mods inset reserved criticism, similar to that proposed for games, so you can quickly assess their quality. Some players also believe that premium content is often associated in the collective unconscious to the official content, and this could create some kind of confusion.

The share taken by the platform on income is also much written on forums valve or Reddit. Both sides compete with one hand those who believe that taking a 75% commission (split between Valve and publisher of the game) on software that you did not create can only be considered a difficult "help content creators," and others who recall that in the middle of the music, the artists are generally well below 10%.

Finally, it should be remembered that the 25,000 free Skyrim mods are in turn always available, as are thousands more available on various games. But it will be interesting to see if Valve and other publishers decide to extend