14 DAY TRIAL // Valve is announcing that it has introduced a new feature to Steam, which allows those who are creating items for DOTA 2 or Team Fortress 2 via the Workshop to share revenue, taken from the company's cut, with toolmakers, mentors, and even entire player communities.
The studio states in the official announcement that "Since the Steam Workshop launched in October of 2011, over 1,200 items created by members of the community have been made available for sale in Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, producing over $10 million in royalties paid to item creators."
Content creation would be harder, if not impossible, without good tools, feedback, and guidance, and the creators themselves have come to Valve in order to get a sharing tool.
Those who make and sell items will not see their revenue diminished in any way, and a simple system of sliders will be used to decide which organization gets access to revenue from the store.
Sharing is not available for those items that have already been accepted for sale at the moment.
Valve is encouraging item creators to "Jump into the TF2 and Dota 2 Workshop Discussions and tell us what other communities, individuals, or companies have helped you along the way that you'd like to be able to compensate. "
The measure will probably drive even more creators to use the Steam Workshop.
Valve has not mentioned whether it plans to expand the sharing system to other video games in the coming months or whether it is only destined to exist for DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2.
Recently, Steam also brought its Trading Card system out of beta, allowing gamers to get access to unique cards by playing a number of titles.
The content can then be traded to other gamers via the official market for real cash.