Bethesda's Pete Hines about talks about paid mods and future plans:
More information.[…] "I think our stance on it is we're going to re-evaluate it going forward," Hines said. "I think that we feel like there is a case to be made that people who spend a lot of time working on mods ought to be able to have a way of monetizing what they're doing.
"Certainly some of the folks that we talked to were very interested in and supportive of the idea," he added. "We had creators who said, 'I've been asking for donations for years and never saw anything, and I made more in one day.' So why would I not support that?"
One of the issues that some brought up around the Skyrim paid mod system is that creators aren't paid enough. As part of the now-scrapped plan, the breakdown for mod revenue looked like this:
"Is this the right split? There are valid arguments for it being more, less, or the same," Bethesda said back in April. "It is the current industry standard, having been successful in both paid and free games. After much consultation and research with Valve, we decided it's the best place to start."
- Bethesda - 45 percent
- Valve - 30 percent
- Modders - 25 percent
Hines told us that, if the paid mod system does return, Bethesda would still expect to get a cut of the revenue— even if the percentage might change. […]