Bethesda has opened up about paid mods for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim on Steam in a sizable blog post on Bethblog.
While we already knew that modders were limited to just 25% of revenue from a mod and the moment taken by Bethesda was determined by the publisher, the company has now offered the actual split between themselves and Valve.
"First Valve gets 30%," Bethesda writes. "This is standard across all digital distributions services and we think Valve deserves this. No debate for us there. The remaining is split 25% to the modder and 45% to us. We ultimately decide this percentage, not Valve."
While only 8% of Skyrim players have ever used a mod and less than 1% have ever made one, Bethesda says:
"Even now, at 25% and early sales data, we’re looking at some modders making more money than the studio members whose content is being edited."
This weekend, when Skyrim was free on Steam, mod sales still represented less than 1% of Bethesda's Steam revenue despite this claim.
Bethesda concludes the post by discussing some of the concerns around paid mods, DRM, and its commitment to Skyrim's modding community.
"This is where we are listening, and concerned, the most. Despite seeming to sit outside the community, we are part of it. It is who we are. We don’t come to work, leave and then ‘turn off’. We completely understand the potential long-term implications allowing paid mods could mean. We think most of them are good. Some of them are not good. Some of them could hurt what we have spent so long building. We have just as much invested in it as our players.
"Some are concerned that this whole thing is leading to a world where mods are tied to one system, DRM’d and not allowed to be freely accessed. That is the exact opposite of what we stand for. Not only do we want more mods, easier to access, we’re anti-DRM as far as we can be. Most people don’t know, but our very own Skyrim DLC has zero DRM. We shipped Oblivion with no DRM because we didn’t like how it affected the game.
"There are things we can control, and things we can’t. Our belief still stands that our community knows best, and they will decide how modding should work. We think it’s important to offer choice where there hasn’t been before.
"We will do whatever we need to do to keep our community and our games as healthy as possible. We hope you will do the same."
While paid mods can help reward creators for their hard work, some of them are frankly terrible. We've listed some of the very worst paid Skyrim mods for you to avoid.
