Hey guys I don't really want to go on too much of a rant here but I've been thinking about Steam quite a bit lately and as to what their role in the industry should be. So I used to think this was quite simple, that is, to offer a cheap distribution network. But nowadays it seems to be going into a bunch of weird directions.

General results from industrial organization(Nobel Prize winner, Tirole's work specifically), seem to indicate that monopolies for the provisions of platforms can be very good for consumers. Though its generally not assumed that this monopoly will be advantageous for the provision of other services(creating more monopolies). I'm no conspiracy theorist but I definitely see Valve taking steam into a bunch of different directions and when it does, it has an advantage because of its distribution monopoly. So some things I have in mind are:

Streaming: I don't understand why they implemented it, I don't know much about costs on this but I assume such a service is expensive and I have trouble believing this cost isn't going to show up somewhere else, and frankly if you are going to do such a service you have to do it well because the alternatives out there are pretty successful.

Pay to mod: More recently, the Reddit debacle about making steam a platform for paying for video games mods. I'm personally completely unconvinced that such a thing will make modding better and its one of those moments were I am proud to be part of the video game community(which has successfully fought this off).

Greenlight: Green light is one of those things where Steam providing it might genuinely add value as you can play the games before release, which is a feature Kickstarter places can't pull off. However this is quite a new business model, and there's perhaps some decision making that Valve won't be able to handle.

So yeah, just general question, what do you guys think of Steam? Do you like the direction its going in? Do you want it to do more or less? I think Censorship is also relevant(do you think they should be censoring what games should go into their platform). Is it trying to do too many things at once?(probably related to that weird Hayekian corporate structure).

Correction: by censorship I meant, do you think they should be controlling what games go on their platform.

I'm still fairly new to Steam; I only truly entered in November... the winter holiday sale was like nothing I've ever experienced before.. In a flash I had almost all the games I had ever wanted.

I absolutely despise early access because... well... why? why would- just forget it... and I'm still not quite even sure what greenlight is. I always thought greenlight just meant a game got the go-ahead to be posted on steam upon completion.

BTW, GoG is going to be releasing their Galaxy client. I'm SUPER excited about that. GoG seem like some well intentioned folk.

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow: I've got GoG Galaxy atm. It is kind of basic and has nowhere near the capabilities of steam but on the plus side it isn't a bloated client.

@gamefreak9: So what's early access then? After it's done, but prior release? haha

Sold.

That is not what Greenlight is.

@ajamafalous:I know the official name has to do with the ideas the community likes which steam goes on to support, but I thought I'd seen it used in reference to early access so I assumed it evolved into an umbrella category. Anyways thanks for the correction. I've deleted the posts.

Well, Greenlight is basically a community voting system to get a game on Steam when it doesn't have a publisher and/or Valve has denied the developer to release their game normally, citing that they don't believe the game 'is a fit for their platform' or whatever.

The unfinished games you're referring to are Early Access, which is a different category. They are not the same thing, but they're also not mutually exclusive. Many games that are greenlit are already finished, and games by larger developers (DayZ or Dungeon Defenders II, for example) have been allowed into Early Access on Steam directly by Valve without being forced to go through Greenlight first.


Also, I will just say that I actually enjoy using the Steam Broadcast stuff, because I can manually decide who can privately watch my broadcasts of which specific games, and do so without it interfering with my twitch channel at all.

Steam doesn't have anything close to a monopoly.

Amazon, GoG, GameStop.com, GamersGate, Green Man Gaming, Origin, Humble Store, GetGames, Bundle Stars, Desura, individual games' sites, and a bunch of other pretty popular places. And don't forget that console game sales are still higher than PC. Just because they sell games on a computer, doesn't mean Valve's market is sequestered off from MS, Sony, and even Nintendo in some limited cases. They just probably have the majority of the computer only games retail market share, but that's fundamentally different from a monopoly in every way.

They're the biggest game in town when it comes to those specific games, with very little overhead vs. profit, so they can use that extra capital to try out a bunch of weird shit.

Flexibility is good for consumers. And as publishers still kowtow to the rigid brick and mortar retail model and decry shady antiquated places like GameStop, while still directly supporting them, some experimentation is what gaming retailers (and gamers) desperately need. I deeply admire Valve for breaking out of the stifling video game industry standards of focus testing, market research, and PR strategies... and just fucking trying stuff.

Not sure what you mean by "relevant". Usually people who argue this are trying to stop censorship, but that article is about how Gabe personally made sure that Hatred was put back in the Greenlight program. Also, if I may be a bit pragmatic, even if Steam was refusing to host a game it isn't censorship. A store choosing to not sell something is absolutely separate from some ruling body preventing citizens from accessing media.

As far as that question though, no. I don't think they should be "censoring" what games should go into their platform, and I'm happy that Valve has made it pretty clear that they have no interest in that.

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Also, as far as your "victory" in getting Steam paid mods canceled (for now), maybe give this a read. This wasn't a win from the video game community (which doesn't exist, btw), it was the only viable reaction to a bloodthirsty minority of hyperbolic children that's left many actual mod creators feeling attacked and betrayed by the users who they thought supported them. The hypothetical damage that paid mods could have had pales in comparison to the actual damage that the vicious outpouring of intolerance has had on creators.

This response is kind of scattershot because of the amount of things you brought up.

GoG is really good if you want to buy, well good old games, as they are way more stringent with ensuring that their downloads will work on most modern systems, as well as offering immediate refunds if a compatibility issue pops up. Steam just doesn't put in that kind of work on older titles. This alternative way of handling games gives services like GoG or the Humble Bundle Store a place in the market, and stops Valve from establishing a full on monopoly.

The Greenlight system is a mess, though introducing restrictions on accounts that have spent less than $5 was a good start. I understand Valve's position on this though; they don't want to start setting precedents by coming down themselves and regulating the games that make it through Greenlight. In some cases, such as when a game is very much clearly a joke, I feel as though Valve should do something. Though I will never play it, I'm glad that Gabe stepped in and reversed the ban on Hatred on Steam.

Early Access and Greenlight are at the end of day like Kickstarter; if they work as intended, the results can be great and give developers options they never had before, though these systems are still open to abuse. However, people who purchase Early Access games should be well aware of what they are getting into, and not complain when a game doesn't turn out the way you hoped it would.

I felt sorry for Valve in wake of the paid mods fiasco. In their letter to the community, it's obvious what their thinking was. Dota 2 started life as a mod. Counter Strike started life as a mod. TF2 started life as a mod. All three of these games are now major money makers and some of the largest MP games around. Valve just wanted to introduce ways of being able to finance such massive, large scale modifications to games, and I personally believe that they were sincere in doing this, as they aren't exactly hurting for money. Skyrim was probably not the best game to start this off with, though the incredibly hyperbolic reaction from the community didn't help matters. I don't say strong statements like this often, but fuck /r/PCMasterRace and their elitist, shitty attitude. I say this as someone that now predominantly plays on a PC.

Man, you are prevalent.

It's funny that you're on a website which is basically a bastion of said non-existent video game community

Support != Financial support

The second is a subset of the first. Many people support fanfiction communities without wanting to pay for fanfiction. Also, it was Valve's reaction, not the modders. There were a great many modders who were more than ready to put up with the backlash to make a little money.

'Hypothetical.' I like that. Like what we saw with the massive outpouring of anger, modders choosing to leave the scene rather than charge money for mods, people inserting ads into mods, people uploading other people's mods from the Nexus to try and make quick cash, the proliferation of cheap cosmetic mods flooding the marketplace, and the necessary removal of mods that contained portions of other modder's work were all... 'hypothetical.'

And all that was in a span of 5 days.

Look, it seems obvious at this point — from the many times you've brought this up since the controversy began — that you were hoping to make money from modding. I'm sorry it didn't work out. There are other ways, and I hate to say this, but I with the exception of some very high end mods like Falskaar (who chose not to charge money) there was not likely a lot of money to be had.

Skryim modding was a long established community that was growing and thriving without people having to pay for mods. Before this fiasco, it was still set to have a long and prosperous life. As Valve themselves quickly admitted, this was not the place to start this.

The good news is that there are curated mod workshops for DotA 2 and Counter-Strike, and really good modders can make some damn good money there. There's also the chance that future Bethesda releases will have options for paid modding at the forefront, maybe even with curating, that will allow opportunities to make modding a paid profession rather than a hobby, for those that do want that option.

That last part is important, because too many on the 'pro-pay-for-mods' side act as if all modders want the option to pay for mods. There are a great many who did not, and were very vocal about this. There was even more that didn't participate in what was going on and continued with their day to day lives.

It sucks when you have to work to support your hobbies, and it would be amazing if your hobbies could support themselves or even you. Trust me, most of us have dealt with this at some point. However, there are other ways of dealing with false starts like this that don't include lashing out.

Not all things are meant to be.

@viking_funeral: Friend, you're really projecting here. I have absolutely no desire to make mods, nor profit from them. My foray into modding began and ended with making a horrible looking Bowie t-shirt for my Sim in 2004. It's pretty disheartening that you're automatically assuming any of my arguments are coming solely from a place of self interest. Please believe me, they're not.

You clearly see this situation differently, but I saw an opportunity for thousands of people (again, not me) to be more able to pursue their passions, and increase the quality and consistency of their work. That's it. I'm not gonna change your mind, obviously. But maybe give this a look and consider an actual modder's points. If you disagree with all of those and think they're misguided, that's fine too.

I have no horse in this race. I just sometimes feel compelled to speak up for ideas that get shouted over. And the past few days have been pretty damn loud.

The problem with choosing the role out of the pay-for-mods option with Skyrim is that Valve didn't understand how that modding community functioned. Bethesda's Creation Kit only provided so much as far as the tools necessary to create mods. There are a series of base-mods, for the lack of better term, created by individuals and groups which enable actions and effects not allowed simply by using the Kit. There are new skeletons, physics engines, meshing tools, and animation tools which have brought mods to a new place and are as much a part of game as Bethesda's original release. However, how does a mod creator charge money for a mod when they are using assets from these earlier mods? In the case of the fishing mod which was heralded by Valve and then taken down it is because that mod used the animation tool created by a different modder. Furthermore, that modder strictly forbids anyone from making a profit from his work, so any mod that uses new animations can't be sold on the Workshop without violating that agreement. The physics engine mod began in Asia but has since been refined by teams in the West in conjunction with the original Asian team. I would say more than half of all popular armor and clothing mods use this as well as some emerging hair, weapon, and jewelry mods. How does Valve plan to divide that pay check up? These are only a couple of the issues I had with Valve's implementation of the pay-for-mods option on Steam. If they are going to make grand sweeping changes to an established community and possibly fracture it destroying the share-and-share alike foundation on which it was built, they better damn well know what they are doing. In this case, they didn't. I am not against paying mod creators for their good work, I just believe Valve chose the wrong game to start with. Like me, Skyrim is too old and set in its ways to change now.

@joshwent: It's an interesting read.

I feel it makes some leaps in logic, in that it equates rating or donating for a mod to appreciation of one's work. Having been both a musician and a programmer myself, I can tell you that appreciation takes many forms, and that many times people will appreciate or enjoy your work without the social confidence or forethought to tell you themselves.

Even then, it falls back on the "I need money to do thing" argument. At certain stages in life, this can be true for a great many people. However, and as this person also choosing to sidestep, there are still a great many people who do this thing (modding) without financial support, or getting more than 1.5% of their users to rate their work, or have a handful of unsolicited people make some donations.

My biggest concern is this one:

The community needs to find a way to bring more incentive for creators to keep making mods.

How is that true? Mods are still being made. Whole teams of people are creating total conversion mods, or 'expansion pack' mods that total tens of hours for no financial incentive. Just because certain people do not or cannot work without financial support does not mean that there are not others who will.

The community is / was doing fine. The argument that money was needed to keep it alive is a false one, and is being used as a justification to their involvement. They are obviously upset that they cannot return and be involved again when a financial motive is provided, but the community was not hurting for content.

To falsely equate the health of the community with ability to pay for mods will ring false in a great many people's minds, and will (unfortunately) breed hostility.

I truly believe that all reasons aside, the primary reason people don't like this is because they DON'T WANT TO SPEND MONEY.

Here he is just speculating as fact. Once again, someone ignores the great damage (non-hypothetical) that has been done to the community and places blame on those who would not support his return to the modding scene... for money. A modding scene which was still thriving without his recent involvement.

I do find some humor in the idea with some of the modders that wished to return to the community (now that money was involved) that they feel that they are personally being attacked, when so much of the focus has been on Valve, and to a lesser extent Bethesda. For so many this was less about telling modders what they can and can't do, and more about telling Valve that they weren't willing to see another area of gaming be monetized by corporations.

If Valve and Bethesda never tried to make a paid workshop, modders would still be modding and mostly everything would be fine in the community. And, you are right, there are some on the anti-paid mod side who have also been awful. This whole fiasco has brought out the worst in everyone.

Hopefully lessons will be learned from what happened here.

Steam's pretty cool.

i think steam is rad. they do some things well and some things poorly. but taken at face value- a business that is selling a service- i'm a happy customer. i've never had to dispute a transaction, i've never felt "burned" by the service, and i've never had reason to doubt their direction. from my experience- they provide voicechat and IM tools that "just work," automatically update games, takes full advantage of my bandwidth (nothing downloads faster than steam), generally speaking their pricing can't be beat, and most of the games i buy are now OS agnostic (being available on mac, pc, and linux). sure- the portal 2 launch (the only real disruption -or more accurately delay- in service i've ever experienced) was a little rough- but so are MMO launches and game of thrones season premieres on HBO Go.

i believe gamers (due to enthusiasm for the past time) often surrender their reasoning when engaging with the various corners of steam. i don't do early access (call me old-fashioned but i want a product developers are willing to stand-behind as complete), i don't engage with greenlight (because i don't have a purchasing interest in the nascent stages of games), and the only reviews i actively read are those of my friends. i mostly rely on word-of-mouth and podcasts (giant bomb and idle thumbs) for vetting, and never preorder. even the list of steam 'curators' i subscribe to is relatively small (4 or 5) and established (giant bomb, idle thumbs, kotaku, a few developers i like such as doublefine and amanita) so i'm never really in a position to have the wool pulled over my eyes.

the trouble is- many of steam's idealistic (read: naiive) systems are designed to leverage the consumer-base for data and moderation. and as it turns out- people exploit systems they can influence for their own personal gain. thusly- i stick to the opinions of those i trust.

i am excited for the hardware valve has forthcoming. i'll see how it's reviewed, and then make an informed purchasing decision.

half life 3 would be nice- but that's the extent of my emotions there. i think the whole "valve should stop fucking around with steam and just develop games" argument is a non-starter. they do what they want- buy it or don't. they don't owe you anything.

tl;dr- they sell a product i'm happy to buy, and i think they do it better than anyone else in the game right now. i don't engage with many of their systems, but i don't begrudge them for pushing them. i have the choice to engage with the service at a level that i'm comfortable with. but as a consumer- i'll jump ship as soon as i think i'm getting fleeced. to date- that hasn't happened yet.

@viking_funeral:

Glad to see your comment. Absolutely agree, the goal of any IP related compensation scheme is NOT to reward anybody BUT the consumer. In other words nobody cares if somebody gets more money or not(this is also the legal position for all of IP), the goal of any such scheme is to increase innovation. If some innovators get richer with an IP scheme, the only excuse for this to occur is if the consumer gets even more value than those people.

It seems to me that these people who think paying would be good ignore the kind of impact network effects can have. I mean its obvious that more people playing your mod means you have more feedback and even more help with future iteration, perhaps even more friends, this kind of value cannot be quantified. If you put a price on it, less people will play it, you might get less feedback and you could be less willing to cooperate with people because it would mean splitting off the profits. Its absolutely true, through behavioral economics(see Dan Ariely's work) that the whole nature of the game changes once money is in the picture, so its basically impossible to quantify such an effect.

Of course there are also practical issues such as the@penguindust comment.

@mellotronrules:I mimic your feelings when it comes to Valve. I am very much not interested in them making games, mostly because I feel like the more risks they take the more steam is in jeopardy. I mean its probably not something we imagine, but its totally plausible that tomorrow something terrible happens to Valve and steam gets shut down. From what I understand they have very little debt so financial problems won't be an issue, however if they lose profitability this could occur, this profitability thing is very much related to their projects. Even if it increases risk of failure only by 1%, this is much more than I am okay with, I have over 150 games on steam which I paid for and any risk to my library is terrible.

Anything that risks an alternative market springing up anywhere is a risk. For instance, this mod thing, if properly regulated(where it checks your game to see if the mods you have on your game file match with the ones you bought), this could potentially spring up a black market, that is maybe an alternative to steam could play Skyrim unregulated. Whenever Steam raises the value of the opportunity cost(other platforms or illegal downloading) it is acting risky and for those of us who have amassed a huge library(that has no salvage value) it is ABSOLUTELY NOT worth it.

true- but i don't beat myself up too much for spending on steam. after all- i'm frequently spending less than $10 dollars for games. i'd reckon i spend more on coffee each year than steam- and that's an investment i'll never get back. and sure- you could argue all that time and energy would be lost- but keep a independent backup of your saves, and you'll have the potential to move to new platforms should steam go defunct.

How is that plausible, exactly? Valve makes billions every year just from their store sale cut alone. I mean, your statement makes no sense at all because right after that you go on to say how Valve doesn't have any debt. If they are making as much money as we all know they are, and have no debt, then this "danger" you speak of where Valve could go out of business in a flash due to one mistake seems more like a fantasy than anything else.

I think steam is sort of a mess, and always has been. It's still a resource hog and the store itself has serious quality control issues. Valve is very popular, but I feel people put too much faith in them. When you look at Valve saying that the whole paid mods thing was just to support devs, people say "oh yeah, valve just wanted to help people". But that's the same type of benevolent talk every company says about everything they do. Ultimately, all their recent decisions have been mostly about making the most money with the least effort. Muscling into the mod scene in this way was probably motivated by the 30% they'd take from each purchase, not in order to help the modding community. If they really cared about mods, they would have foreseen the numerous issues that would arise from their paid mod system, and either put in more effort or scrapped the whole thing.

Ultimately, I don't think they're going to have a monopoly. Valve, just like EA and Blizzard, know that a successful online storefront is based on having a few key, super popular games that draw people in. Valve has several of the most popular ones, but not all of them. In the grand scheme of things, they are the biggest name in online videogame distribution, but I don't think they're the best. Each service has it's advantages and disadvantages.

In general, I'd say steam's only gotten worse over time, except for the first years where it was (more of a) a janky mess. Valve just seems to be, for a lack of a better term, lazy, and I think it really shows in how horribly almost all of their recent experiments have gone (greenlight, early access, paid mods).

@mb: There is no such thing as a riskless business. Anything alluding to the contrary is nonsense. Debt is not the only way a company can go out of business. Equity holds risks as well(though much less), not to mention odd regulations that come along or just new technologies in general. For instance its not at all impossible that Valve pulls out some scheme that is protected by patent trolls and gets shocks to its income(which could force other things to occur).

Valve has said for years that if/when Steam shuts down, users will still have access to everything they bought. Of course, in their Valve way, they've never specified what they have to facilitate that, so if you wanna get conspiratorial you could assume they've been lying the whole time. But even in the extremely unlikely scenario they end up doing nothing at all, you could still just copy the individual keys that came with your Steam purchases, and download all of the game files somewhere else.

It's really not something to worry about, let alone get worried about a company's "risky" behavior over.

I've read that before but i'm pretty sure they are covered by limited liability laws anyway(aka if they go out of business they don't have to care). Could be true but could not be. I personally don't know enough and I am not sure how it would work in practice, but yeah I obviously think that if somebody asks Gabe if we should get keys or not he would say yes, though conditional on that scenario that is, Valve going out of business, there would probably be liquidation people in there and I don't know if there is any value in restoring our keys to us.

Anyways its not like I think they are likely to go out of business, I just think its possible. Tech firms are riskier than most, the point is that they are entering lots of areas and there is a real possibility that this fragilizes them. I mean if they enter into too many areas and are trying to keep up technologically its likely they will eventually rack up debt(I can't think of a firm that never uses it). I recently read that they are going into VR tech too, obviously its cool if they are just trying things out with their free flow structure but the issue is if they start leaning too much on risky techs.

Just FYI I didn't start this thread to call on doomsday scenarios, I was just mostly interested in how people feel its going with the investments they are doing and if they are interested in seeing more or less of that stuff, I'm more interested in value added. I don't think I've seen much on GB but more generally on the internet I've begun to see crowds kind of lashing out a bit.

They implemented it to replace the 2 network cables I had running to my livingroom as HDMI extenders and the 3rd cable as a USB extender. Thanks Steam. :)

It was implemented half-assed and Valve quickly turned it off and is offering a full refund to anyone that paid. A Donate button is supposedly getting implemented in its place, I don't use mods so I don't know if it's there yet or not, but it shows that Valve listens to its customers and is capable of nimbly changing course.

Greenlight's a neat idea, but there isn't much opportunity for it to become better than what it already is. What it does right now is attempt to ask the community if there's a market for what developers are proposing. But I just click No on everything because I'm a dick.

Yeah, that'll happen. ;)

I'd add to the overall question of Valve branching out, the point that they have been constantly working on tons of side projects for years that we just never hear about. It came out after Jeri Ellsworth (and others) were laid off three years ago that they were working on augmented reality hardware and software, and Valve decided not to continue in that direction so they were let go. It's also important to note that Valve let those ex-employees retain the rights to that tech they were working on when they were there. A cool move, but a pretty big "loss" in just the general corporate sense. But Valve didn't seem to be hurting even after loosing all of that R&D that they had paid for.

You're right that no company is immune to risk (except maybe American car manufacturers, farms, and large banks, but that's another story), but it's also important to consider what kind of company Valve is. Before any of the "risky" stuff, they're a retailer. Their cash flow is completely independent from doing VR stuff, TF2 hats, weird controllers or whatever else. Basically, even if every one of these enterprises fails, it'll only be a blip on their much more robust bottom line.

Consider another experimental retailer, Amazon. I'm old enough to remember when they were a new, simple place to buy books online. Now they're in film, TV, and game development, hardware manufacturing, media streaming, hell, I'm pretty sure GB itself is still hosted by Amazon Web Services. To an outsider, this might look like a company gone mad, spinning a million expensive plates that could collapse at any time. But their stock prices continue to rise and investor satisfaction remains high, because, thanks to their core business as a retailer of pretty much fucking everything, they could loose on all of those other ventures, and still just fall back on making their cut of transactions on their site.

And it makes sense when you realize all of those "risky" projects come back around to just getting more people to use that core service. They're making TV shows?! (shows that you can watch early or exclusively through Amazon Prime) Their e-readers don't make any money?! (yep, kindles at best break even, but the people who buy them then buy ebooks through... Amazon) And so on.

Valve's "risks" are the same. Above all, they just want people to use Steam as much as possible. Greenlight and Early Access, whether successes by themselves or not, served to get many more indie games visibly on the platform. Streaming and Steam Machines aren't some attempt to take on MS and Sony and make a console to rule them all. They just think that living room PCs are going to become more common, and they want Steam on those boxes. And even regarding this most recent kerfuffle of paid mods through the Steam Workshop, it wasn't some ploy to squeeze extra money out of hard working individuals, because that money would have been pretty insignificant to them. I could be totally wrong, but I feel pretty confident in saying it was, more than anything, just a way to get people who mod their games to be active on Steam longer.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but I hope those points came across. Valve has been doing weird shit for a long time, so these recent things aren't much "riskier" than all of those efforts that never panned out. And that they, as a retailer first, are in a very unique situation that can subsidise experimental efforts and absorb their cost if they don't work out.

@johnsonvillebratwurst:

I thought you were being metaphorical until half way :P.

@joshwent:Insightful post. I agree that its interesting, all this branching out. Its just that as far as i'm aware no firm has ever retained such a large share of the market(in both market share and scope), and while I don't doubt its profitability, I am skeptical of its robustness in the long run. These internet giants, google/amazon may sound unbreakable to us but i'd say every dominant firm in their time probably sounded so, very rarely do they maintain such positions for over say 30-40 years(with the exceptions of banks, largely due to central banking), I mean its possible the digital age is different but its just too early to tell.

This is tangential but while you are right that agriculture can rely on fairly steady demand, it does hold considerable risks for individual farms as they can and do suffer pretty bad supply shocks at times, though the subsidy situation does sometimes keep them afloat, and of course the big ones have political capture so yes they are immune, which seems to be pretty similar to the car situation(so if you were referring to political capture when you said "riskless" then I agree, though I don't quite think anybody in politics would bat an eye if something happened to steam).

One thing though, I am aware of the comments Gabe made about the unprofitability of the paid mods thing, I just find it misleading, I think it would have very much generated revenues way beyond their cost base. I mean this was only an implementation on one game and for only 3 days(I think since he made the comment) and it probably recovered over 2-3% of the cost, not to mention that it seems a bunch of the main modders were against it so they didn't post their mods on the shop. I can easily see it being profitable over 2-3 year period.