THE END OF THE MODDING COMMUNITY

author=LockeZ
No, 30% is eaten by Steam. Steam then allows the game's creator to take whatever amount they want: Bethesda decided to take another 45%.

I feel reasonably sure that Bethesda deserves whatever amount of the profits they want, and also that you'll get way more than 4x the sales on Steam than you will anywhere else, so, like, the cut that the mod creator gets is the opposite of a problem.

Bethesda can claim whatever they want. However keep in mind the game is still selling only because of those mods. I think 45% is fair on their part. However if that is the case they need to host the files themselves because Steam is greedy and would never allow monetary transactions without getting a cut. Steam actually sees less sales these days because several other sites like GOG have no DRM policies. A policy I sued and won over. But I digress. Nexus Mods sees just as much traffic as Steam does. Steam may have around 9 million users, but they provide all kinds of shit not just mods for Skyrim. Nexus Mods Skyrim site sees 3 million people and exclusively provides Skyrim mods. I would say that if you took into account all the people who don't use Steam for Skyrim that Nexus Mods which we KNOW is 100% Skyrim probably sees more traffic related to Skyrim. Again this is not counting other sites like Desura, ModDB, or GOG. Many popular sites exist and while Steam has a large number of users they are not a focus group, where as those sites have specific sections and sites for focus groups. Safe to say Steam is not going to get 4 times the sales reliably for a single game or genre of game.

author=Ratty
Game patches break mods, until mod authors fix them. Mod authors come and go, either through lack of interest or real life concerns like jobs and family concerns taking obvious precedence. You can’t guarantee a modder will provide ongoing support for their work, so you absolutely can’t charge people for it.

author=LockeZ
I don't know if you've ever used electronics but the fact that something won't work forever is definitely not a reason to not charge people for it. How many servers for current-gen online games do you think will be running in fifteen years? How is the latest Windows XP update working out for you?

I agree with LockeZ. Plus the only reason "life" ever gets in the way is because they can't make a living making those mods. If they were getting paid chances are job issues wouldn't come up and family might take precedence until you make a living doing something. I doubt these people quit those other jobs because some family problems Ratty.

EDIT: I stand corrected. I got curious and looked it up. 9,002,828 members for Nexus Mods. But let's look at actual downloads for a SINGLE mod shall we? Nexus Mods is at 9,108,561 for SkyUI with 4,515,999 unique downloads. On Steam 492,540 Subscribers and 1,145,642 unique visitors. Not all visitors download however let's say they did. 4 times that on Nexus Mods. I think you should do research before making a claim and throw some evidence to support that claim next time. Feld and Harmonic did that shit all the time and it got annoying because "I said so" isn't sufficient proof.