On one hand, I like the idea of letting modders get paid for their work. This could be a turning point where people are willing to spend more time and effort making quality mods because they can be compensated more easily. And although there are going to be problems with copyrighted material and the like, the general idea is a good one IMO.
That said, the implementation seems to be very lacking. The apparent lack of oversight seems to be a potentially major issue that sabotages this whole project. People won't spend money on games as often if they need to check to see if it works within 24 hours. This can be remedied in a number of ways (first 50 downloads are free, the ability to give modders good or bad reputations, etc), but is currently an issue.
The biggest problem though is the price distribution. Maybe it's just because of how it looks from the outside, but 25% of the price going to the modder seems too low to me. To my knowledge, 40% of a game's price typically goes to its developer and publisher. True, the modders are using somebody else's game as a platform, but in this case, Steam should likely get the smallest cut of the deal. I'd say it should be a 20/45/35 split between Valve, the game's makers, and the modders, simply because Steam is providing the least of the trio.
Maybe if each developer/publisher could lay out and modify the ratio somewhat, that would be preferable. In a transparent system, developers could make games specifically so that they cxan be modded easily and provide large shares to modders to attract them. Conversely, a developer may not care about modding, and not offer a great deal. That's fine too. I just wish it were more transparent.
