They may have supported them genuinely in the past. Not really relevant for the situation now, especially since the main thing they seem to have learnt is that mods can be monetised. It also couldn't be any more accurate. Sorry bro, Gabe ain't your friend, Valve ain't a charity and they could easily afford to host mods for free in perpetuity- or take no cut from them- with their current business income. They don't because Valve and Gabe like money, even when they have enough of it. That's for profit companies for you. Don't think I said they don't care about the products they make, they by and large care a lot about them as that's how they make money. As for their user base, they care enough not to want to alienate them, and that's all. It's also why lock in is important, as it raises the alienation threshold.

If they cared they'd have things like a decent support system. Paid mods were a legit shit show, not some drummed up controversy. They had people stealing others' work for profit and the like (and Valve saying that was OK, no less), they had no support offered, they had the ridiculous revenue split- it wasn't made up fake controversy, they actually did the stuff they were accused of and for once reaped the whirlwind.

As for greenlight- it was crap, but it will be replaced by crap because doing game submissions properly is hard and costs money, and Valve wants easy and cheap. They're either philosophically or practically (both, almost certainly) incapable of setting up a good system. It won't 'fail', except in the way you seem to hate- public backlash. It's free money for Valve, it can't fail from their perspective unless it fucks their branding up. Their vision is clearly one where mods are paid for, with them getting 30% of that money. From their perspective that's inherently far better than a status quo in which they offer the same thing and get nothing instead.

I didn't realise we were talking about changing anything. I was just saying what I don't like about recent developments in mod support.

The one where Valve isn't making money out of it of course. Devs and modders getting a cut is just Valve's excuse for charging money from other people's work, otherwise they'd offer transaction fee free and steam cut free donation option where all the money went to the modders.

Talk about naivete. Wow!