At first, this idea seems brilliant. A simple, easy way to integrate mods into your game without having to download unofficial third-party programs, or having to scroll through the Nexus hoping you come across something that catches your eye. But then it clicked...

Bandwidth doesn't come cheap, and Valve surely aren't providing this service out of their kindness of their hearts. At what point will they do a 180 and start charging for mods when it starts to burn a hole in their pockets? It'll be "Horse Armour" all over again... but this time making money off of people who don't even work for them. Not only that, but the Nexus was pretty indiscriminate in whatever their users upload, so what's to stop Valve from saying that certain content isn't "family friendly" and therefore banned from distribution?

Really, like a lot of things concerning Skyrim at the moment, some things are better off just left alone as they are.

If they start charging, just use Skyrim Nexus.

Or, just maybe, there isn't a agenda and it will be free forever. :thumbsup:

About the servers bandwidth, I think that ads can help.

There is no way for Bethesda to sell mods that contain custom resources created by the modder, without the modder's explicit permission. Not even the CK EULA can force that.

Would there be a possibly where these Steam downloaded mods mess with your .exe, not allowing you to install "3rd Party" mods from the Nexus? Adjusting the LAA already gets you VAC banned...

Valve's games have always been the most mod friendly games on the market. Always. Consistently. They're the ones who make DLC and give it away. Always. Consistently.

It's a valid question, but you're barking up the wrong tree with this one, friend.

Yeah, user made mods wont cost money, ever.

Almost impossible because most mods don't have anything to do with the .exe, they are .esm and .esp.

This.

Wait a minute, steam workshop has skyrim mods??? I dont see any

This as well.



This is true as well.

From the EULA:



Also:


This was very true, but after seeing what they've done to Team Fortress 2 and the whole stupid Hats craze I just can't put much faith in them anymore.

The hats are purely cosmetic, and you can get them all for free by playing the game. Not only that, but they have made the entire game absolutely free now. I think you have no idea what you're talking about.

Nexus and Planet Elder Scrolls is where I've always gotten my mods, and that I shall continue to do. I don't care about Steam Workshop.

Look, I don't want to go off-topic, but the hats and TF Store took the game in the wrong direction. I'll concede that yeah, the game is free now, but the last time I played it almost half the server I joined was AFK just trading and spamming the chat. And no, they aren't cosmetic, many of them affect the properties of the game. They're "free" in the same way winning a lottery is "free", you still need to pay for keys to unlock crates.

I doubt valve will find a way to start charging for mods made by others using 3rd party programs but what I worry about is that they start supervising the content. Family friendly and politically correct are things I very much hate.

If they start charging and the modders get money or even free games out of it... I'll consider paid mods. If modders get nothing out of it, I will never buy a mod from Steam.

I don't think it's off-topic at all, since we're basically discussing valve's intentions with extra content. I've never had a problem finding a good TF2 game, although I must admit that I don't play it very often anymore.

Just hope they will not remove compatibility with mods coming from outside the workshop because i guess that everything available at workshop will be "politicaly correct" to not hurt ... well hum those that could be hurt ... :read:

To anyone worried about Valve being "family friendly", I'll just say this: Somewhere on the internet, there are nvde mods for every female character in their games. You certainly won't see those things on any Valve-run sites, but they do exist. So just use the Nexus for (Skyrim equivalents of) those.



There aren't any yet. Need to wait till the CK comes out.



I don't get too much of that afk/trade spamming. But I blacklist any idle/trade servers I see, so I never even see them on the server list. And only the first four set hats, that require specific combinations of weapons for their effect to take effect, actually change gameplay in anyway. But only one or two of those sets are worth using even with the set bonus. And opening crates is useless unless you want more useless stuff. Everything that actually affects gameplay can be found for free.

They've made the game free and they actually pay successful modders with money. How does that in any possible way sound like them not supporting the modders?

How is this a problem? They're not talking about Steam Workshop becoming the exclusive distributor for Skyrim mods. It will just be another choice. If they don't carry types of mods that you want, you can continue to get them from Nexus or another source. Modders will continue to decide where they want their mods hosted, so one stop shopping isn't up to either Steam or the player. If you want it, you'll get it from the site where the creator chose to put it.

Just bumping this with an interesting read from Skyrim Nexus:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/news/article.php?id=37

Definitely worth a look.

Valve are at the forefront of the PC modding scene. They not only release mod tools that are still being used today, but they also host several huge mods on Steam itself (Darkest Hour, Zombie Panic, Age of Chivalry, Dystopia, Empires, Insurgency and more) for free. They wouldn't start charging for mods, especially for a game that isn't theirs. As for money, Valve already makes more money per-employee that Google or Microsoft.

As Kextra said, it would be very un-Valve like to charge for mods. But either way, I'm probably not going to use this Workshop, and stick to the Nexus. I like being able to customize my mods, and if the Workshop auto-installs mods like Steam has in the past, imagine the compatibility problems!

Without programs like Wrye Bash and BOSS, this Workshop feature is useless to me.

EDIT: This is working under the assumption that Skyrim modding will be similar to Oblivion and Morrowind, of course.