Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman has published a blog post in response to Valve’s decision to allow developers and modders to sell their mods directly through Steam Workshop.
As a developer who got his start with a free mod which later released as a paid version, he has an interesting perspective.
“There’s a lot of craziness about paid mods, a lot of people who don’t know how they feel,” Newman said. “It’s probably no big surprise that I’m all for it. I sold a mod once and everyone was angry that it was happening, until it happened and they got a much better product than they’d have gotten when it was released for free, then they seemed to calm down a bit. It has given me a career for 10 years. It’s bought me two houses, a bunch of cars. It’s created a company that has hired 30+ people.”
Newman agrees that the alleged revenu share, which gives modders only a 25 percent cut on sales, is unfair, but thinks it will get better with time, and players still have other options.
He says that no one is forcing players to pay for mods they don’t want, that the market will probably balance itself in terms of how much different mods will cost, and that players can always resort to pirating if they don’t have the money.
“So find a way to pirate them,” he said. “That’s what we all did when we were kids with no money. Valve’s job is to make it more convenient for you to not pirate stuff.”
Valve’s new modding program launched on Thursday only with Skyrim (other supported titles will be announced in the coming weeks), but it’s already caused a great deal of controversy. Many players are saying that Valve is greedy for allowing modders to sell work that was previously free, and one mod’s been removed after claims that it contained the work of another modder.
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