The owner of Nexus, Dark0ne, responded to Chesko on Reddit:
"Hmmm, the reason we're positioned there is because (1) I don't want to charge for mods and (2) even if I wanted to, I can't. Valve approached me about being a service provider, where I could take up to 5% of their cut of things and it was seen as the Premier League paying a very, very tiny amount towards grass roots football. Which is handy, because it'll end up paying about 10% of the cost of upgrading and running the forum server in light of the increased traffic we have right now, which adds nothing to the upkeep of the Nexus sites. Every little helps, right?
It was offered as a gesture of thanks, directly from Valve, to Nexus and several other tools and sites in the community for the continued work done within the community, and is accepted as such, with the stipulation that it wouldn't stop me from forming my own opinion and sharing said opinions openly and publicly. And I said up to 5%, so if a mod author selects 5 service providers, each service provider gets 1% of Valve's cut. I knew this was coming since they messaged me a few weeks ago, but I had no idea when. I was under no NDA, though, and a few mod authors approached by Valve have said the same. Wasn't for me to get involved, I'd already made my news post pre-empting everything.
Not really too worried about that one biting me in the ass.
I'm sorry about what has happened to you. I've been watching the events unfold and it's been horrific to watch. My Skype is available in the private mod author forums if you would like to chat. A lot of mod authors have been privately talking to me about what they think, some even apologising to me for some reason for contemplating using the service and I've told them all the same thing; I cannot and will not begrudge you for wanting to make money from your work. This backlash was always, ALWAYS going to happen. I told Valve as much, and they said they knew. I'm not entirely sure they knew it would be THIS bad, however.
Edit: With a bit more clarity on how service providers work. It's not hidden, it's on their service provider listing at the bottom of this page (
https://steamcommunity.com/wor..., which explains how it works. Mod authors select service providers who they think helped them in their modding, and in turn, the service provider gets between 1%-5% of Valve's cut of their profits, depending on how many service providers were picked by the mod author.
So the mod author opts in to it themselves, and the money comes from Valve's cut."