Valve is going to keep trying to make paid mods a thing. After the horrible mess that was the Skyrim paid mods, this time they are staying in their own wheelhouse with
Dota 2.
Introducing the Custom Game Pass, a new system for supporting and rewarding custom game developers who are committed to building vibrant and lasting communities around their games.
Custom Games Passes will be limited to a small number of high-quality games that have established themselves in the community. Purchasing a pass directly supports the creators of the custom game as well as granting you extra features for that game. All custom games will remain free to download and play.
The first Custom Game Pass will be available for Roshpit Champions at a price of $1 for a 30-day duration. While everyone can play Roshpit Champions for free, the Custom Game Pass will enable additional stash and character slots, and offer multiple perks for the duration of the pass.
For more details you can read
this PC Gamer interview. But this is the most important bit for this post:
The community was also worried about quality control and the general 'worthiness' of a mod being paid for. What stopped a mod maker from asking $10 for a minor gameplay tweak? We will be carefully selecting which custom games are able to offer a Custom Game Pass, selecting only games which have already established a sizeable community and are mature enough to offer good value to customers. The community also had concerns about the potential for stolen content in paid mods. The Dota team's curation of the process addresses this, requiring a custom game to be free of copyrighted materials to be considered for a pass.
Ok, great! It will be curated and free of copyrighted materials! Valve is on the case! Well....about that.
A post on reddit appeared pointing out some of the stolen assets that are in Roshpit Champions, including art taken from World of Warcraft. I guess Valves curation team is as good as its customer service team.
