Valve to Reintroduce Payment Feature to Skyrim Workshop
After an unsuccessful attempt to add a payment feature to the Skyrim Workshop last year, Valve is giving it another try.
The evidence of this came to light when uLLeticaL, one of the major Workshop contributors, posted a picture on Reddit. The picture showed the text “You can subscribe to this item for free because you are the creator or listed as a contributor,” implying that Workshop contributors will be able to charge for their content. Crashz, another major contributor to the Counter Strike Global Offensive Workshop, confirmed that Valve is adding this new option.
Valve’s previous attempt to add a payment feature to the Skyrim Workshop was met with a negative response from the community, resulting in its cancellation within a week. Valve had expressed a desire to apply a similar system to other games, including Counter Strike and Dota. It remains to be seen whether Valve has revamped the payment feature or is simply retrying it. The fact that it has been exactly a year since the first attempt suggests that there is a strong possibility of the feature being implemented soon.
Valve employee Alden Kroll acknowledged the failure of the previous attempt, stating, “We understand our own game’s communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there’s a useful feature somewhere here.”
Valve would be taking a big risk with this reintroduction, as it is uncertain whether the majority of content would be considered worth paying for. There is also the threat of people creating free alternatives to popular paid content. However, the Counter Strike community has shown a willingness to spend money on virtual cosmetics, indicating a potential market for paid content. The update is expected to include multiple games, although Valve has not yet made an official announcement. It is anticipated that the update will go live soon.
Image Credit to /u/uLLeticaL