So can people not just keep their mods on nexus for free if they feel they would get more money that way?
If so I'm glad it's going down like this.
Just to reiterate: Mods can still be released for free (both on the Nexus and the Steam Workshop). At the moment, the only thing that is happening is some authors are stopping all updates to the free versions and forcing you to pay for the recent version (Wet and Cold being an example - the newest version 2.0 is only avaible by buying it). Will this change? Possibly, but we don't really know. However, one issue that comes up is that people are charging for their mods while using assets from mods that are free (or outright stealing free mods and selling them) and those authors don't want any of their work to be used by someone charging a fee. I believe one of the initial mods (a fishing one) using assets from another mod has been removed (and I think Wet and Cold is now wet because it uses assets from a mod who doesn't want someone selling their work.
What's the split between Valve and Bethesda?
50% for Bethesda and 25% for Valve.
Again, to reiterate: Valve takes a standard 30% cut from anything sold for cash on Steam. Since mods are now sold, Valve is taking their 30% of the cut. The current distribution is 25% for the modders, 30% for Valve, and 45% for Bethesda. Apparently, Bethesda can change how much they get so if you have an issue with modders only getting 25% it seems you should take it up with Bethesda. However, Valve does hold all of the money until you reach a certain point and seems to have given the okay for people to use assets from other people's free mods so they aren't exactly blameless.
Pretty surprised by some of the more recent moves by Valve.
First the $5 charge to use features on Steam and now this (if this is true of course). Didn't realise they were that hurting for money...guess Vive, that new controller along with their OS and Steamboxes drained them more than they anticipated?
This really isn't that big of a deal (and if you went through the thread about it you would understand why). The features really aren't that important (and only Steam has the ones you would lose - so no complaining about people being harsher on Origin), the people it affected aren't really people Valve cared about anyway (only play f2p and doesn't even spend a dime to buy any hats or anything - which is fine as long as you realize your aren't really getting priority over paying customers who kept getting spammed by bots for invites), and you can easily get around it - just buy something for $5 or if for some reason you can't spend $5 - just find someone who is willing to loan you $5 bucks to buy something (you could even just buy a game and gift it back to them - only gifts that you receive don't count toward $5 dollars not gifts you buy).