Valve is a company that is almost universally loved by gamers. It helped give birth to the digital game ecosystem we have today and made some of the most beloved games of the past 20 years. However it does screw up on occasion and just like every other game-centric company, players take it to task when it does.
The most recent scandal it was involved in was down to paid mods, which it introduced on Steam for certain Skyrim items and sent gamers into a frenzy. It began to fracture the modding scene and looked like a slippery slope to removing much of the creativity and altruism found within the modding community.
So Valve pulled it, for now. It still seems keen on the idea, and just feels that it messed up the details.
"Robin [Walker] made Team Fortress when he was seven-years-old or two or something, in the bush in Australia with no electricity. On paper," said Valve business director Erik Johnson, in a . "If you ask Robin in passing, ‘What do you think about people being able to pay for mods,’ his reaction is gonna be like, ‘That’s awesome! I wish I had that option before I was a professional working at Valve. I wanted to pay bills and have a customer base.’"
The way forward he said, would be potentially to try again, but with one of Valve's own games. It already has a lot of micro-transactions built into games like DotA 2, why not add something similar to Left 4 Dead 2, or Portal 2, allowing for more expansive developments?
Something tells me it still wouldn't go down well, but would you be more accepting if Valve tried it on its own games first?
