Online game store Steam unlocked the hit game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as a temporary, weekend-long freebie for all its users on Thursday, and the reason was so that fans might put their cash elsewhere. As of this morning, the game's Steam Workshop section, full of user-made content like mods, turned into a marketplace where creators and fans can assign prices to their creations and directly make cash—a first for the Steam service.

Up until today, the Steam Workshop allowed fans to tinker with compatible games and upload their creations, additions, and updates for the sake of free downloads. What changed today is that those creators can now, after filling out a "tax interview" and providing a bank account that accepts US dollars, charge users whatever price they please for their new levels, their visual overhauls, and their flaming swords. A creator can still leave their wares on the service as freebies, or they can choose either a static price or a "pay what you want" structure. Should a buyer not be satisfied with a mod, they can request a refund within 24 hours of purchase.

The Steam Workshop launched in 2011 as a way for fans to upload weapon and item designs for the game Team Fortress 2; Valve then chose its favorites, along with favorites as voted by fans, to be added to the official game, at which point DLC payments would go into those creators' pockets. Other non-Valve games include this "golden gate" user-generated sales functionality, as well, but Skyrim is the first—and currently only—Steam game where users can bypass the game's developers and sell their add-ons without any creative approval. (Should an unethical modder try selling other users' Skyrim creations via this updated Steam Workshop, they can file a DMCA Takedown Notice directly through Valve's site.)

25 percent? Really?

This news followed a long-demanded update to Skyrim in March that eliminated its Workshop's mod size limit, which had stood at a meager 100MB for years; weirdly, Bethesda's announcement about this change has since been deleted from the company's official blog. Meanwhile, Valve's last major update to the Steam Workshop came in January, which expanded its golden-gated mod-selling functionality to include the third-party games Dungeon Defenders: Eternity and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare.

According to Skyrim's Workshop summary page, modders will receive 25 percent of any payments—a seemingly low amount compared to revenue sharing on other services like the App Store (which pays 70 percent), but on par with the revenue sharing rates for golden-gated mod sales in Steam games like Dota 2. The service doesn't tell sellers how Valve and Skyrim publisher Bethesda split the rest of the cash.

Sellers do get to tell Valve where to donate some of the remaining 75 percent of revenue, at least—including educational services like Polycount and open-source development resources like Blender. Money-making modders will have to wait until they've earned at least $100 of sales before receiving a payment (and, as stated above, Valve will only pay modders in US dollars).

Only 19 paid mod options are available for Skyrim as of press time. Valve's announcement hinted to "many of your favorite Workshop games" receiving the same kind of paid-mod support "in the coming weeks."