Skyrim Workshop Now Supports Paid Mods

Today Bethesda announced that modders will now be able to charge for their mods on the Steam Workshop. By itself, it’s already an extremely important and newsworthy announcement considering how huge the series’ mod scene has gotten since Morrowind’s release, but perhaps even more important is the fact that neither Bethesda nor Valve will be curating this market at all. Modders will have the complete freedom to decide what to sell and for how much. I can’t deny that I’m very apprehensive about this change, but I’m also very interested to see how it will turn out.

A few excerpts from the announcement post:

We’ve had a long and excellent relationship with our good friends at Valve. We worked together to make the Workshop a huge part of Skyrim, and we’re excited that something we’ve been working together on for a long time is finally happening. You can now charge for the mods you create.

Unlike other curated games on Steam that allow users to sell their creations, this will be the first game with an open market. It will not be curated by us or Valve. It was essential to us that our fans decide what they want to create, what they want to download, and what they want to charge.

Many of our fans have been modding our games since Morrowind, for over 10 years. They now have the opportunity to earn money doing what they love and all fans have a new way to support their favorite mod authors. We’ve also updated Skyrim and the Creation Kit with new features to help support paid mods including the ability to upload master files, adding more categories and removing filesize limit restrictions.

Steam has already published a page on this new addition to the workshop, and a few mods are already on sale, but it’s important to note that a refund policy will also be in place for customers. As usual with Steam, the amount paid will only be credited back to your Steam Wallet, but it’s better than nothing:

Steam Workshop Refund Policy

1. Valve offers this refund policy exclusively for initial purchases of user-generated content made directly via its Steam Workshop page. In particular, this refund policy does not apply to purchases of tradable Workshop Items on the Steam Community Market, to transfers of items between users via the trading system or to in-game purchases of Workshop items.
2. In order to request a refund, click the “Get Refund” option on the item’s Workshop page, which is accessible from your Steam inventory page (in the Steam Client, select View->Inventory from the top menu). Refund requests must be made within 24 hours from the purchase of a Workshop item. The remaining time for an individual item is displayed on the item’s Workshop page.
3. Once your refund request has been submitted, you will lose access to the content for that Steam Workshop item and any other Steam Workshop items associated with the refunded transaction.
4. Refunds will be credited exclusively back to the Steam Wallet from which the original purchase was funded. For reasons of fraud prevention, your Steam Wallet will be credited for the transaction within two to three days from the time you submitted your refund request.
5. Valve may restrict an individual user’s eligibility for future refunds if there are indications of an abuse of the refund system. In this case, the restriction will be clearly communicated to the user and only apply to later purchases.
6. The terms of the Steam Subscriber Agreement (http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/) apply.