Modders can now charge for mods on Steam Workshop

Up until now, Steam Workshop was a haven filled with amazing, ridiculous, and often amazingly ridiculous mods that gave players the ability to either add some cool items to their game, or change their game up completely. Hell, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim probably benefitted most from Steam Workshop, which allowed modders to not only make the game look better, but even add new questlines, essentially prolonging its lifespan.

Today marks a rather monumental change for Steam Workshop, since modders will now be able to charge real money on the mods they spent so long creating. It's a double edged sword, of course, since up until now all of the mods were free and it gave players unbridled access to everything at a click of a button. However, those modders usually never saw anything in return for their hard work. You can check out the paid mods for Skyrim right here.

Of course, buying mods can seem scary, especially if a mod can crash your game, or just plain not work when you load it up. Steam has a policy in place that allows you to get a refund for a mod, if it doesn't work the way it should.

But free mods aren't going anywhere. You can still easily filter mods by choosing free. Here is the Skyrim free mod page which gives you an idea of what you can still download completely for free.

I'm on the fence about this, since I always looked at mods being there more for the fun of it, rather than means of extending my play time. And while it's smart that Steam has a refund policy in place, it still feels strange that there isn't some sort of quality control over what modders deserve to charge for their content and what should be free.

Currently, only Skyrim allows modders to charge for their mods, but according to the press release, additional titles will be supported in the coming weeks.

How do you guys feel about this? Would you feel comfortable paying someone for a mod? Let us know.