I think for the bigger mods they would have to do some QA with them, or maybe collaborate with a couple of modders to make a specific pack of mods that play well together, like a mini-DLC or something. I play Skyrim, Fallout 3 and New Vegas with a whole bunch of mods, and sometimes they have a few hiccups. For example, in my Fallout 3 my character sometimes tilts 90 degrees up or down at the waist when firing a rifle. I find it kind of hilarious, but it would bother me if I paid for all those mods and their powers combined somehow had that effect (especially knowing how difficult it can be to figure out the culprit). It's easy for inexperienced people to mod their game into a corrupted mess, and by making the mods more accessible to the general public you are going to have a lot more people angry at Steam/Bethesda because 'MY GAME IS BROKE' after installing 300 different hairstyle mods.
That's a really big can of worms right there. I wonder if they ever had a plan do deal with that kinds of things. I mean, practially everyone I know has made experience with mod incompability. QA would not only be important for bigger mods, think about game updates breaking things. You'd buy a mod and next week's patch breaks it, do they intent to force the authors to keep actively updating/fixing? And for how long? Imagine an expansion coming out a year after release and suddenly you sit on three dozen dead mods. If they were free... well that sucks. But paid mods? Were it alright if installing Dragonborn broke Hearthfire?
I think for the bigger mods they would have to do some QA with them, or maybe collaborate with a couple of modders to make a specific pack of mods that play well together, like a mini-DLC or something. I play Skyrim, Fallout 3 and New Vegas with a whole bunch of mods, and sometimes they have a few hiccups. For example, in my Fallout 3 my character sometimes tilts 90 degrees up or down at the waist when firing a rifle. I find it kind of hilarious, but it would bother me if I paid for all those mods and their powers combined somehow had that effect (especially knowing how difficult it can be to figure out the culprit). It's easy for inexperienced people to mod their game into a corrupted mess, and by making the mods more accessible to the general public you are going to have a lot more people angry at Steam/Bethesda because 'MY GAME IS BROKE' after installing 300 different hairstyle mods.
That's a really big can of worms right there. I wonder if they ever had a plan do deal with that kinds of things. I mean, practially everyone I know has made experience with mod incompability. QA would not only be important for bigger mods, think about game updates breaking things. You'd buy a mod and next week's patch breaks it, do they intent to force the authors to keep actively updating/fixing? And for how long? Imagine an expansion coming out a year after release and suddenly you sit on three dozen dead mods. If they were free... well that sucks. But paid mods? Were it alright if installing Dragonborn broke Hearthfire?