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I don't see any problems with paid mods. If you do 100 hours of work to create something and would like to charge people for it, you should absolutely be able to (assuming it doesn't violate copyrights).
The flightsim community has worked off this model for over a decade, and it works just fine. There's no shortage of new free content (some of which is absolutely fantastic). There is an entire industry built around creating and selling aircraft and scenery, most of which is worth every penny in terms of quality (even the expensive $70+ ones).
A lot of people attacked the Skyrim implementation making it sound like Valve/Bethesda were just gonna start charging for all of the popular mods in some kind of bait and switch scheme, but whether and how much mods would cost was left completely up to the mod developers (they even had a chose your own price option aka donate please). This isn't limiting, it's empowering. It gives those who want to publish their mods as products the power to do so, and allows those who do it as a hobby to continue as they always have. Modding as we know it doesn't go away under this model, it didn't with flightsim it wouldn't have with Skyrim and it won't when they reintroduce it.
All that being said, Bethesda's 45% seems large, especially for a game that's already sold a hefty number of copies. My guess is they were trying to establish a precident so that when they introduced the same model to their next (more expensive to produce and therefore smaller profit margins) game there would be less shock when they asked a similar cut. I see this as them trying to make up for increased development costs when games continue to cost $60, but still 35/35 at least.
Valve's 30% take is because they are handling the transactions and sales taxes for you. This is a service fee, you see them a lot in the real world (my college loved them), get used to it.
alpha69a
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