Valve Cancels Paid 'Skyrim' Mod Programme, Issues Refunds To Steam Users

In an unprecedented move, Valve has dismantled the controversial paid mods programme for "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim." The decision to cancel the company's bold initiative implemented through the game's Steam Workshop hub, which allowed modders to charge gamers for their work. Valve is generally reputed to be a videogame company that pays heed to user feedback, but the speed and sincerity with which the company acknowledge the mistake and took full responsibility for the blunder is still surprising.

The decision to shut down paid mods comes just four days after Valve announced the launch of the radical new programme, according to Destructoid. Meanwhile, Bethesda and Valve have already completed discussions and agreed to refund everyone who had purchased "Skyrim" mods in the interim. As per the Steam Workshop agreement, the modders were entitled to 25 percent from the total mod sales, whereas developer Bethesda and intermediary Valve took a whopping 45 and 30 percent, respectively.

"We're going to remove the payment feature from the Skyrim workshop," said Valve in its statement. "For anyone who spent money on a mod, we'll be refunding you the complete amount.

The paid mods feature was met with strong dislike from gamers across the board. Steam's own community forums and other popular gaming forums on the internet were inundated with gamers raising concerns over what they considered was an unfair monetisation. One of their major concerns was the possible deterioration of what was hitherto a free community endeavour due to greed and commercialisation.

As Dual Shockers notes, this concern was raised by the largest modding portal Nexus Mods founder Robin Scott, who stated that the commercialisation had already begun driving a rift through the community. Some modders had already been accused of stealing code created by other creators for profit. Kotaku points out that this even led to some paid mods using plagiarised content to be shelved from the Steam Workshop programme altogether.

Citing recent incidents of questionable games being sold through Steam's Greenlight Programme, sometimes including plagiarised content and Trojan links as reported by Ars Technica, gamers had argued that it would have been impossible for Valve to vet individual mods. The 24 hour refund window too was considered inadequate for judging the worth or the operability of a paid mod.

However, the decision didn't come before both Bethesda and Valve attempted to salvage the situation with a bit of damage control. Valve boss Game Newell had dedicated a better part of the day to discuss the ramifications of the paid modding scheme with the videogame community through a Reddit AMA.

Meanwhile, "Skyrim" developer Bethesda had written a lengthy blog post justifying its rather controversial decision to take a whopping 45 percent of the revenue share. Gamers, in particular, weren't happy with the company profiting from some of the mods which fixed the game's multiple unresolved bugs and issues. They argued that this allowed the developer to essentially make money from its own laziness and inability to deliver a polished product.

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Official Trailer (credit: Bethesda Softworks)