http://www.gamespot.com/articles/modders-should-be-able-to-make-money-from-their-wo/1100-6427080/

Modders should be able to make money from their work. That's according to veteran game designer John Romero, who co-created iconic shooter franchises like Doom and Quake at id Software in the 1990s.

GamesIndustry International spoke to Romero recently about the issue, which has made headlines of late following Valve's introduction--and subsequent removal--of paid mods on Steam.

In the interview, Romero not only says modders should be able to make money, but he reveals that id Software even experimented with a paid mod system with Quake back in 1995.

"I've always believed that mod makers should be able to make money from their creations," Romero said. "In 1995, while we were making Quake, we had the idea to start a company called id Net. This company would be the portal that players would connect to and play other mod maker's creations. It was to be a curated site, levels and mods chosen by us at id, and if we put your content on our network we would pay you an amount equal to the traffic that your content drove to the site."

The idea for id Net was abandoned, according to Romero, because the team was stretched enough as it was just to release Quake. But Romero still believes in the concept, saying creators ought to be "rewarded for their hard work."

Quake, of course, was the basis for the free Team Fortress mod. That game later spawned a full sequel--Team Fortress 2--which has become one of Valve's most recognizable titles.

Valve introduced a paid mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on April 23, and removed the program four days later amid controversy over revenue-sharing and the concept itself. The company said one of its main goals for the paid mod system, which began with Skyrim and was to later expand to other titles, was to help modders make money so they could in turn be able to spend more time making better mods.

"We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free and paid," Valve said at the time. "We wanted more great mods becoming great products, like Dota, Counter-Strike, DayZ, and Killing Floor, and we wanted that to happen organically for any mod maker who wanted to take a shot at it."

"It's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing."

I don't think many people disagree with that point. The main problem was how Valve did it was an absolute mess, and the fact that Valve/Bethesda took the majority of the money and outwardly stated that they were willing to do absolutely nothing didn't help...

Some gamers are big crybabies. They love mods, but they think that anyone should expend dozens or hundreds of hours creating them for free, always.

Despite that, Valve's and Bethesda's shares were beyond ridiculous.

Yeah, it's only fair that modders be able charge for their creations. Who knows, maybe modding can become a job and people can make some really neat stuff, maybe even large-scale projects with the money they earn.

I still think the main problem was that people don't want to pay for mods. At the end of the day no one cares where the $60 you payed for a game is going ( and it sure as hell ain't going mostly to the workers ) but suddenly when something which used to be free suddenly become paid ( and IMO mods should have been paid content from the start, since they add to the game and not make the  original game incomplete without them ) then suddenly who's getting the bigger cut is important.

At the end even the modders don't care that they aren't getting the biggest cut out of each sale. It's better than nothing at all in their pockets.

Making something that has always been free cost money is a bad idea, but there are ways to monetize it moving forward without pissing everybody off.

Also, just as a passing comment, it interesting to see the differences between monetization in modding and monetization in youtube as they both seem very similar and yet people react to them in vastly different ways...

The best way is to hire the talent and make them part of the team working on the next iteration or paid dlc.

Offering a purchase model for mods opens a whole new set of issues that need to be regulated, compatibility, system requirements, patches along with main game updates, copyright issues, plagiarism, dependency on other mods and their updates.

The idea that adding a purchase model will only increase the quality of mods is pretty naive. See the app store, or xblig. There are some gems, yet is the ratio any better than with the best unpaid mods?

I agree they should but through donations to the modder rather than paid mods because of just how much issue paying for a mod has

If a modder truly feels like that their mod is truly worth purchasing, then they can go for it, and try to charge money.

Considering how knowledgeable most PC gamers are, they will most likely be able to determine whether or not to support the modder, and whether or not the modder deserves profits for his/her work.

Maybe. That said, modders need to make money for themselves, not the game's publisher. The publisher deserves none unless they also distribute the mod, in which case they deserve whatever costs may be associated with distributing the mod.

That is, the modder takes it all except for distribution costs.