Being a huge fan of Valve I follow them and listen to them. They are the best for a number of reasons.

One of the interesting things was Gabe Newells talk at the D.I.C.E. He claimed his company can quite happily offer better value than other inferior developers like Bungie. Yet... It was the users who defeated them. He went on to explain that they simply can't keep up and that user created content for games like Team Fortress 2 come out at a rate of around 10 times the amount of content Valve can put out. Not only that, the creators themselves now make a living off it including 5 figure salaries. 14 year olds are probably making more money by making game items than your mummy and daddy.

When you look at titles like oblivion or even Skyrim while a lot of the content produced is not great. a certain amount of content is not only as good but exceeds the quality of Bethesdas content in many areas. Since publishers love monetizing whenever humanly possible... With DLC essentially the equivalent of paying for mods 90% of the time (shitty $20 COD map packs)... Why not take advantage of this?

A developer can only focus on a game for a certain amount of time before moving on. By allowing users to create content that is democratically chosen with quality control both the fans the developers can prosper. A game would be supported far exceeding the time of traditional support with probably far more content. Bringing in a stream of money long after release.

When Gaben came up with steam, people cynically lol'd. Some people cried because the game took 40 minutes to unlock. However looking at history he has the last laugh. Now the future is moving to DD and EA have copy pasted steam with Origin. Many indie developers practically live off steam. Aside from this gaben also spoke about services within steam. What a guy.

Basically, do what Team Fortress 2 is doing. People like hats. Valve are pro-customer geniuses who should be worshipped accordingly.