Here's what really bugs me about this whole thing.
Video games used to be about fun. You went to the store, paid your money, and took home your shiny new video game and that was it. From there you could enjoy everything the game had to offer. A self-contained, complete experience. No muss, no fuss. You fired it up with no online dependent DRM, no day one patches that contain half the game, no intrusive clients or browser plugins, it just worked or you got a refund. Simple.
Now you are pushed to pre-order for 'bonus' DLC, retailer exclusive DLC, and don't forget your mountain dew promo codes or some other cross-brand integration synergies. Why is a pre-order necessary for digital copies that are functionally infinite? Who knows! Just pre-order now! Oh, don't forget your season pass while you're at it. You too can pay up-front and sight-unseen for some poorly described additional content for a game you haven't even played yet - and may not even like once you realise how different it is from the pre-release marketing hype. Hope there aren't any launch issues or crippling bugs thanks to rushed/non-existent QA. Thankfully they're having a pre-order beta so you can pay to QA your own game.
Once you're in the game you think you're safe to enjoy your new purchase? Not a chance. Need to work your way through the crafting/drop/experience system shoehorned into the game for reasons passing understanding? Well good news, 'help' can be yours early for only $4.99! Maybe you'll get whatever you want from the RNG gods, maybe not - fancy another 6 rolls of the dice for just another $19.99? How about some overpowered weapons available at the start of your RPG to completely unbalance the experience? At least you better hope they're overpowered or you just wasted $9.99. New maps for your favourite FPS? That'll be $19.99 for some reheated maps from some previous iteration of the franchise. If not any of those then I'm sure there's some way the game has been broken so you can be sold the fix. Always another (not-so) micro transaction to nickel-and-dime you for your enjoyment.
And now, mods. Once the result of the community playing around their games. Wonderfully ad hoc shenanigans doing the ridiculous for its own sake, or fixing bugs that the publisher/devs don't think are worth the time to patch, or just improving the game in some direction or another. An all you can eat buffet ranging from the essential to the amazing. And let’s not forget the insane. Provided with no warranty, no promise of quality or support, no guarantees, and no expectations of anything beyond that. It’s a sharing community there for the love of it. But the monetisation of every little aspect of gaming marches ever-onwards. Now you can pay for those too. Hope it'll work for more than 24 hours, let alone 6 months. Best check to see if it’s dependent on (or clashes with) some other mod/version of the game - it’s your money on the line. Customer support? From Valve? The publisher? For a mod? Good luck. Best go back to sifting through the endless pile of low effort low quality crap, since now it’s about making a buck. It’s the appstore all over again. Found something promising? Better hope that at least it’s the actual creator who's getting paid the 25%.
To be clear, there are many fantastic modders out there who absolutely deserve to be rewarded for their hard work. But 25% of the sales from a monetised storefront is the wrong answer on many levels. Yet that's whats happening with Valve and the publisher tapping in once, twice, thrice again on a product they've already sold. Never mind that they've already been paid for the game, or that the modding community has likely already netted them more sales and longevity. It’s not like “Skyrim did better than we’ve ever done on PC by a large, large number. And that’s where the mods are. That feeds the game for a long time." Tod Howard, interview with Rock Paper Shotgun. Apparently that's not enough of a return on the work of modders doing it for the love of it.
No, we need to inject money into yet another facet of our hobby. Remember when games were about fun?