That's called piracy and it hasn't stopped any business ever.

Believe me, I'm on patreon and there are people giving a ridiculous amount of money to creators despite their content being free on the internet. Some creators are even part of the forums where their content is made public for free and embrace it rather than condemn it.

If there is good content and a convenient way to pay for it then people will come and they will pay. Not everyone but enough for it to be profitable.

So I guess you never heard of any business starting? You think any business just springs to life and is instantly profitable? You know how much money was tanked in the beginning months of every single new storefront? Steam, Kickstarter, Patreon, GOG, they all lost a lot of money at the start.

You know how the money on a storefront is split today? Between the dev, the publisher and the storefront. Sound familiar? It's called a business. Expensive is also very subjective. People pay as much as they want and if it's too expensive they won't buy. How is that different from any other business?

I was hoping Bethesda would announce PS4 mods from external sources. But that decision is more in Sony's court.

What we have here with Creation Club is mods from professional sources, at least judging from what they've said so far.  That means, “All the content is approved, curated, and taken through the full internal dev cycle; including localisation, polishing, and testing,” the company says. “This also guarantees that all content works together."  https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/12/15780924/bethesda-creation-club-skyrim-fallout

This might be good for PS4 users, who have the short end of the stick in terms of mod support, and perhaps for Switch users.

Of course, the content might be crappy and overpriced but we don't know that yet.  I will at least check it out.  

But those new business sold full products, not mods for games. They'll need something more than mods to be profitable, like being another digital games store that would have to compete with Steam, GOG and the rest. I wish them good luck.

Also no. Nowadays a game's price is split between the store and the publisher. The developer studio gets paid by the publisher who has signed a publishing deal or just contracted them to make the game. And most of them don't get extra money unless a certain goals, arranged in the contract, have been met, like a certain metascore or selling X amount of copies.

Lastly, mods are now free. At any price you try to sell them they will look too expensive compared to something that costs nothing.

That was Desura's niche, being run by the same guys who own the Mod DB. It failed and was sold off last year to OnePlay

It was a great e3 for them. Short and sweet.

Doom psvr, wolfenstein and Dishonored 2 all great announcements.

Steam already tried the whole paid mods thing, with little success, or so it seems.

I'm actually not opposed to the idea, as I think paid mods allows mod authors to fund their creativity. The vast majority of mods will likely remain free, but some of the larger mods will have a price. If anything this will incentivize more people to participate in the already huge modding community.

That's all I expected from them. I didn't notice people were disappointed with it. It was short and sweet and showcased their mid-tier offerings well. What was bad about that?

Some businesses are better run than others. Just because on company failed doesn't mean the concept isn't viable. The people who want to pay are already there but the right product is missing.

Remember when online was free because companies didn't think people would pay for it?