Valve Updates Steamworks Platform To Support Sales of Mods

One of the most compelling aspects of PC gaming is modding – altering a game to make it better, extend its gameplay, or change it entirely. Enormous communities exist that revolve around modding, whether it’s one dedicated to a specific title, or a network that categorizes mods for all games. It’s big business, you could say, and it seems Valve has finally decided to embrace it.

With a new update rolled out to the Steamworks platform, users can begin to charge for their mods, no matter how large or small. Steamworks has long offered content creators the ability to sell items they’ve created for select games, but this move helps take things to the next level.

This update manages to bring back some memories. In August of 2012, Jamie penned a piece called The Rebirth of PC Gaming – Bring on the Modders!, and in it, he said:

Steamworks offers something truly unique. A large amalgamation of thousands of types of mods, enhancements and other features that can be bolted onto 1000s of games, with an existing filtering process. All that needs to be handled is a payment processing system – and what do you know, Valve provides that. PC gaming and the community that Valve’s Steam platform has helped build, is in the perfect position to allow this.

Ding ding ding! Someone give that man a prize!

As it is today, Steamworks’ paid modding capability is only available for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (what a surprise…), but additional titles are going to be added in the coming weeks. It seems like it’s just a matter of time before mod sales will begin to appear on the front page of Steam, and that to me is an exciting prospect.