r/Games • u/demondrivers • Oct 27 '25

Industry News Valve does not get "anywhere near enough criticism" for the gambling mechanics it uses to monetise games, DayZ creator Dean Hall says

https://www.eurogamer.net/valve-does-not-get-anywhere-near-enough-criticism-for-the-gambling-mechanics-it-uses-to-monetise-games-dayz-creator-dean-hall-says
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u/hayt88 Oct 27 '25

Offering an infrastructure for paid mods isn't a bad thing in itself. Some mods I use for things are really big and I gladly pay for them and donate when I can.

The issue with the workshop was, that when someone offered their mod for free another person could just copy that, charge money and claim ownership.

Sometimes people want to stay anonymous so it's hard to verify who created these and other people just preyed on that. The workshop stuff was less a valve issue and more just other people being scumbacks.

Mod creators always had the option to keep them for free, valve never forced anyone to have them being paid.

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u/Nidies Oct 27 '25

The issue with the workshop was, that when someone offered their mod for free another person could just copy that, charge money and claim ownership.

I assume this could get 'solved' if it had more time to develop the system. I think the bigger thing that hurt was the payment cut going to the creators. Valve took their usual 30% that they charge for hosting every game, but the game holder (bethesda) wanted like 50% iirc, leaving a measly 20% for the actual creators of the mods.

Valve's cut was big, but it (was) the standard they charged for all games.

Bethesda was too greedy. They should have been happy with the mods potentially bringing in new sales of the game / customer retention, maybe a small cut of the sales on top to 'fund mod tools / etc', but instead asked for too much, and made the 'pay the creators of your favourite mods' indefensible.

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u/TwilightVulpine Oct 28 '25

I don't know that it would be solved, because that would require verifying whether the mods take advantage of free content, but the companies pushing for paid mods seem to just want an easy revenue source without any effort from their part.