Daybreak Studio President John Smedley won't seem to be winning any popularity contests with gamers any time soon. The man heading the company behind the popular zombie-based MMO H1Z1 has proclaimed himself as a fan of paid mods.

Valve's decision to put "Skyrim" mods behind a pay wall was met with an almost unanimous backlash from gamers and some of the mod creators as well. The sentiment against the idea was so strong that both Valve and Bethesda had to backtrack and scrap the entire project and reinstate free mods. The paid mods exercise lasted less than a week on Steam before Valve was forced to retract the pay wall. The incident went on to become one of the biggest blunders in Valve's history, with the unfortunate fallout of driving a wedge through the modding community as well.

It's no surprise that this debacle is viewed by a vast majority of gamers and industry people alike as an unfortunate event. However John Smedley believes that it was an "awesome" idea," according to Game Reactor. In fact, the H1Z1 maker even went on to proclaim that he sees some merit within the concept. The Daybreak Studios chief has engineered some controversial decisions in the past, so this doesn't come across as a total surprise.

"Look at the Valve mod payment thing, for example; it’s a great example of—of course they’re smart for doing that," said Smedley in an interview with PC Gamer. "Modders getting paid is an awesome idea and I wish they’d stick to their guns, but sometimes you think you have a solid plan and it gets in front of the players and they’re like, 'Yeah, we don’t like this,' so it changes."

Smedley wishes that Valve had stood its ground and held onto the paid mods programme. He believes that controversial decisions are like bitter pills that have their place for the betterment of gaming. However, the Daybreak Studios chief also acknowledged that it is prudent to listen to gamers because they are the ones "who pay the bills."

Acknowledging Valve's foresight in listening to its user base, Smedley stated that he likes dealing with companies that listen to their users. He proclaimed that Daybreak Studios is one of the companies that do just that. He admitted that sometimes the ideas put out by the company are met with opposition by gamers. Smedley may be alluding to the recent backlash against the zombie FPS "H1Z1."

The zombie MMO was criticised by gamers for having a microtransaction model that was ostensibly "pay-to-win." Gamers were upset that the game gave an unfair advantage of surplus ammo and supplies to those who had forked out real money for air drops. This was viewed as a violation to the developer's pre-launch promise of keeping weapons and ammo out of microtransactions, according to a prior International Business Times Australia report.

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H1Z1: The Easy Life (credit: H1Z1 YouTube channel)

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