Here's mine. Regardless of philosophical debates on modding communities (though mentioned), hopefully this highlights the very real technical limitations that this system provides.

Hi Valve!

I wanted to express concerns over the new Mod Marketplace.

I'm not going to sit here and boycott your service, or wax extensively on my time with Valve and your Steam service. Neither really matter, here.

You've faced flak before for systems put in place, and most of the time at least, changes or updates are made to absolve those fears. It's great if that works out this time around, but I'm not so sure.

However, given the very real technical limitations of Steam Workshop as it exists today, especially to games that Valve does not directly own, there are simply too many issues to allow this to continue until they are resolved.

To start, with a minimum price of .99c (understandably so due to credit card processing fees), you've already set a bar on what is viable to actually put on the market place. Though the 'pay what you want' system is a good start to controlling this aspect, it still leaves a lot to be desired, making the concerns below that much more heinous with hundreds of people paying $1 per mod, regardless of how simple it is.

Maybe this is a philosophical debate, but I don't think 'the market' will simply sort itself out this time around, and if anything we can already see examples of these failures with Green Light, Early Access, and 'pre-alpha' sells. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a completed, reliable product for consumers. Already in the Skyrim workshop we see a couple major issues:

1) Outright fraud. People taking mods from others and putting them up on the store as their own.

2) Rushing or minimally developed mods being sold; possibly causing game-breaking issues.

3) Existing mod creators abandoning previous versions (and all the bugs of previous versions) in light of selling only the fixed version. [This is totally common in the software world, and I get that. This impacts the community, however, and regardless of how it works out in the future, the effect is already being felt.]

4) Many of the mods that can hold their own as a stand-alone DLC, adding hours to game play or adding to the overall experience, can't even be installed through Steam Workshop, or at least not the way that's intended, due to the limited nature of what a user can upload.

eg: Wet & Cold on the Steam Workshop can not run without additional libraries added to the game. A great number of Skyrim mods, for example, rely on some very common libraries that are added to the games folders.

Usually these run the mill of .dll files are understandably dangerous to allow through a service like this. It's far too easy to hijack a library file to make it run whatever you want on the host computer.

How many tickets do you think are going to come in from people unable to run something they've paid for? That, given the nature of paying for something, they reasonably expect to work through as simple and straight forward a transaction as how they bought the game itself?

Given the detriment to the existing community, issues with existing games and what is capable through modding, many games just aren't set up to handle the full breadth of what's capable through Steam Workshop. Most games are not TF2; they don't get a vetting process, they don't have an entire team working internally to make sure that modders can do as much as they want within the system without worry on technical limitations.

Without the ability to reliably make sure that these products aren't going to be game breaking, have money go to the right developer, or allow the user to install with the same convenience, I think the problems far outweigh whatever benefit can be perceived.

Valve hasn't had an issue admitting failure in the past, but have also proven their worth in fixing issues. Either way it works out, good luck. You've stirred a honey pot, and I do not envy anyone that has to sit through this onslaught of emails

Good luck,