The only paid mods that Skyrim has are the ones for Creation Club, and I haven’t heard of people getting through the approval process with stolen work.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but I’ve never seen an official supported modding marketplace exist without a significant number of free mods being sold as paid by not the original developer
There was initial paid mod attempt that they walked back due to player outcry, not because the paid mods themselves caused any problems. Which doesn’t really work as an example of “paid mods are almost never a good thing for the game itself”.
The Creation Club has been around for years, so technically speaking “paid mods” have been around in Skyrim for a while. Which maybe suggests that paid mods aren’t going to cause problems if they’ve been in place for this long?
In addition, mods always end up in a situation where someone’s work was stolen, which no one cares about when it’s free. Everyone’s just using everyone else’s stuff because it’s all working to make a better ecosystem
<span style="color:#323232;">Creations can range anywhere from simple cosmetics or gameplay tweaks to entire new quests and encounters - it's up to what you can conjure! Our internal document available to Verified Creators has some specifics, but in general:
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</span><span style="color:#323232;">Creations must be standalone, so it cannot depend on other community releases, free or paid.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Creations must be all-new to qualify for release. You cannot re-purpose older releases – or work by other authors, unless contracted.
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Maybe, but people’s egos alone are enough to causing issues in the mod community, I’m not sure paid mods are necessarily going to make this significantly worse.
In theory I’m not entirely against the idea of paid mods. I don’t necessarily buy that mods are more “pure” if no one is able to make money from them. And I do like the idea that people might invest more resources in mods than if they are effectively donating their time to the projects.
That said, things can definitely get complicated quickly once you start providing financial incentives. I think it’s smart to require mod makers to go through an approval process rather than just make it open.
Can impact, but likely not a huge one. Just like how most people playing Skyrim are playing without mods, most people playing GTA games aren’t going to bother with mods and modded servers.