Steams new workshop program

[Grabbin_Megroin]

Some people here may not be familiar with the new changes in the Steam Workshop. What has been done is that fan made mods can now be uploaded to the workshop and sold/given given away for free (if you choose to sell your mod you get 25% of the price listed). How it worked previously was that if you wanted to sell your mod you had to garner enough support from the community (usually thousands of backers) in order for the content to become an "official" addition to the game.

Right now only mods for the game Skyrim are permitted to be uploaded, but once Valve is comfortable with their new setup they'll probably begin to add new games at a rapid pace.

I'm sure that the creators of most Total War mods would be happy to keep their mods free, and probably don't even want to bother with uploading their content to Steam. However, it's a very real possibility that somebody could take the files and upload them themselves to the workshop, and make a nice profit off of content they had no part in creating. Somebody could also copy an entire mod, tweak a few things to make it stand apart from the original, and put it on the market that way in order to avoid any copyright infringement.

What I'm getting at it is that once mods for Total War games are allowed to be uploaded, content creators should keep a watchful eye to make sure nobody steals what they made. If that does actually end up being the case you can issue a DMCA takedown notice, but who knows how long and tiresome that process may be. What may be prudent is to upload the content yourself as a safeguard against the possibility, although that might also end up being a pain if extra work has to be done on the mod to retrofit it for Steam.

It's a shame that Valve has done this because while there is a chance this change might help grow the community, it opens up doors for bad people to exploit generous people for their hard work. Who knows though, there may be a possibility that CA does not allow their games to be apart of the new program, although I doubt it due to the fact that it seems their new focus is all about the money and not about the community.

Here is the official rundown: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent/

[Sint]

if you choose to sell your mod you get 25% of the price listed)

That depends on the company.Valve gets 30% the rest is not decided by them.A company could also say 35% for us, 35% for the modder.

And I think it is a terrible idea that will just hurt modding.