-It is not a pure cash crab, like just retexturing some sword / armor etc. Otherwise we're going to see a huge drop in released mod quality.
Most paid mods will be light mods as this ensures their safety. The less elaborated, the less likely to mess with the game.
-Pricing has to make sense. If a mod with huge ammount of content costs 5-10 euros. They can't allow people to sell bunch of armor mods with same price.
Modders set their price to sell. Most will go for the $1 or even half a $1 if Steam can accomodate the transaction.
The number of downloads is what counts, not the price by unit.
-The mod doesn't break up people's games and that it actually works with other popular mods most people are using.
This will be provided by modders themselves.
In order to control the market, reputable modders are going to form up gangs, co opting each others.
The compatibility of their products will be one of their tags, ensuring that sales are channelled to them (players will buy one mod over the other because one is compatible guaranteed) and ensuring that newcomers/outsiders are given the rough edge (selling their products without the agreement of the syndicate will be harder)
-There has to be some kind of refund policy to ensure that people are not tricked to buy stuff they don't want. I cannot tell how many times some mod's description has not matched to reality.
Steam has already a refund policy.No reason for them to amend it.
There are plenty of reasons to be unhappy about this, but I think the most compelling is this: we've never seen an example of a distributed digital marketplace that succeeds at treating creators and consumers with respect, and where the intermediary (the platform provider) doesn't extract an undue amount of value.
Creators are themselves consumers. It is a moot point to distinguish them on that point.
The deal is set to benefit the consumers known as devs, modders and Steam.
Steam cut is known: 30% and not set to change as Steam will prefer to keep it unified for all. Steam might surrender.
The other cuts are not yet set.
If devs push the negotiations to the utmost without surrendering, this means a 35% cut for them and 35% for modders.
Over 10, 000 downloads of a $1 mod, this means $3000 for Steam, $3 500 for devs, $3 500 for modders (two weeks work time of a person paid $7000 per month)
And that only over 10,000 downloads, job of devs will be to incitate to mod purchases so this might run up far higher.
As to the point on refunding, it is the job of modders to ensure their products cant be dried up before the 2 hour mark.
Quests might provide 30 minutes content, the 30 minutes might be spread over several hours of playtime. Modders will act accordingly.
