The problem, to me, is the implementation of the current system that screws up everyone, including the consumer, who has no real guarantees that the mod will continues working after, for example, future updates of the game, as well as the refund being made in virtual wallet cash (which is not really a refund).

Other problems are the meager amount of money that goes to modders (turning them into nothing short of sweatshop workers), the lack of support from Valve and Bethesda (example - cooked saves, no mod order load), the fact that Valve keeps the money (and the interest from it!) until modders made at least $100, which means they have to sell $400 before seeing any cash at all, the way thing are its far too easy to steal content and sell as your own, mod inter-dependency... Yeah, this current implementation was nothing short of a disaster.

At least Valve is adding a pay-what-you-want with $0 being a possibility (GabeN said so in his AMA), but this is hardly the solution to all the problems here.

Of course, there are the other problems derived from this, such as companies releasing incomplete games on purpose so modders may fix it themselves (though, in Bethesda's case, they already do this anyway), a fraction appearing in the community (including between modders themselves), the community turning into one of competition instead of one where everyone helps each other means less progress on the mod front and so forth.

Personally, I think Valve should do 3 things:

1- Let publishers set the split, sure, but make it so modders must get at least 50% from it. Less than that is an insult. Valve and Beth want to tax this as if this was a game dev - publisher relationship, while not offering the same level of support a game publisher offers to its partner.

2- Make it so all mods must be offered in a pay-what-you-want model, and must also be offered for free. This, while seemingly a heavy handed stance, would have prevented almost all the problems we are currently seeing, especially in regards to the community split. Also, it will hardly translate in less money, as, like I said, this would happen with the raise to at least 50% of the split. Reverting to this stance would also generate a lot of goodwill with the community that would quite possibly translate into more donations. Finally, it might prevent a lot of people from going to piracy, which may include the core games themselves (and anything else Bethesda releases, and I did hear people saying they would do just that).

3- Offer better support for modders. Example - make it so Bethesda has some responsibility regarding game updates that breaks mods (and giving them prior knowledge about things that are about to change - maybe making all modders alpha testers of new patches for a week so they have the time to adjust anything before release). Also, give modders their money with the interest accrued on it, as Valve shouldnt profit from money that isnt even theirs to begin with.

While these won't fix everything, it would be a good start for everyone involved.