I guess you’ve all have read the news a couple of weeks ago: Valve paid the creators of the Polycount items the agreed percentage of the proceeds from the in-game store of the first two weeks. This turned out far more lucrative than anybody would have guessed.
The five creators received between $ 39,000 and $ 47,000 as their 25% share of the sales of their Polycount items (single items or bundles) in the first two weeks. Those are impressive numbers. The numbers are getting even more impressive if one tries to estimate the total revenue of the Polycount items, which are probably between $ 8-900,000. No idea how many non-Polycount items have been sold, but IMO it’s safe to assume the total amount lies somewhere between $ 1-1.5 million. For two weeks! [1] That’s not bad business for providing no real counter-value, except creating/maintaining the infrastructure to execute the deals.
Basically I have no problem with Valve earning that much money from dealing with virtual items. Obviously people are willing to spare the money without any real necessity. Of course the fact that the Polycount items for a class only show their full potential as a set created a strong incentive, but I claim that not having a full set hardly created a strong disadvantage for players. [2]
In other words: The money Valve earned with their store is the money we threw at them.
What fills me with a bit of unease is the questions what consequences arise from this success for the future?
Halloween has already shown Valve teasing us with new items, including items only available for sale (not craftable, not droppable). As long as those are merely decorative items I don’t care too much. If people are willing to shell out money for that stuff that’s fine by me.
I just hope that this success doesn’t give Valve any wrong ideas, like offering gameplay items exclusively on the shop, or offering items in advance for a period of time for sale only before they become droppable/craftable. It would not be like Valve to do something like that, but then again who knows what might happen once they have tasted blood ...
The other source of unease is the financial compensation for community creators.
Don’t get me wrong, I applaud Valve for letting the creators of community items participate on the financial success of the store. It’s just fair, but it’s still a nice move. However, what consequences will emerge from this for future community creations?
With that much (potential) money involved – after all, $ 47,000 is more than many people earn in a year – this creates a huge incentive to participate in any future contest or even on the regular contribution page, probably far beyond the TF2 community. Any good modeler might feel tempted to enter items just for the chance to earn money that way, even if he doesn’t play TF2 at all.
I’m a bit torn about such a prospect. At one hand it shouldn’t matter if a model (weapon, item, hat) comes from within the community or from "outside" as long as the model is done well and fits the theme. But on the other hand it decreases the "community" aspect of things, of the community adding items to their game, but even more it commercializes this aspect of the game. People will no longer develop items because they think it would look cool within the game or add an interesting aspect, but in the hopes to earn big bucks that way. The fact that Valve allegedly indicated that the financial compensation might be extended to other elements like maps or custom GUIs only adds to my qualms.
Again, I don’t say it’s necessarily wrong. If somebody creates a fabulous looking hat why should I care if he’s a TF2 player or spends most of his time on Starcraft II? Still, it somehow doesn’t sit right with me. Probably because from now on creating community items might no longer be prompted by compassion and love for the game, but by the deliberate calculation of financial profit. It’s kind of a loss of innocence for the process of creating community items.
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