“We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. Valve outlines that it underestimated the differences between previous revenue sharing models and the introduction of paid Skyrim mods, misjudging the effect it'd have on such an ingrained modding community. We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it.' 'We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid. 'To help you understand why we thought this was a good idea, our main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities,' the post states. Valve co-founder Gabe Newell took to reddit over the weekend to address outcry from those who were concerned that a pay model will corrupt the modding community, explaining Valve's goal was to improve modding both for creators and gamers, a sentiment reiterated in today's post. One of the first Skyrim mods on sale, a fishing mod, was taken down because it used assets from a second mod by separate creators.

Valve introduced the controversial paid mods program to its Steam Workshop last week, beginning with its roll out to Skyrim's established modding community. It's obvious now that this case is different.” “We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. “We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing,” the post reads. Valve is removing the payment feature from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim workshop, according to an official Steam Community post that admits Skyrim's established modding community was 'not the right place to start iterating.'

Steam paid mods 2019