Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post

The comparison to Maya doesn't really work since you aren't just using a tool to make something you sell for money and thereby entitled to all, or even necessarily a large amount of money. You're using someone else's intellectual property to make your mod and sell it. If paying for Maya also came with the entire game made and IP developed for you to integrate your work into you'd have a valid comparison then. But 25% for making and selling content that builds on and relies entirely on the work of others to even be relevant? That's pretty smurfing generous. You won't get a deal that good anywhere else in the industry for that kind of work.
I'd say that using a game engine is pretty similar. Unity, Unreal, all come with pre-made assets, scripts, AI, tools, and so on and so forth. Modding Skyrim is not all that far removed from building something in a commercial game engine. Some of those are royalty free licenses, some of them require royalties. But they don't take 75% of your revenue.

Let's turn it around and look at it another way: Bethesda did not build a commercial game engine. They built a game which they released at a certain price and must be purchased by everyone before they can even start to think about installing mods. Bethesda have already been paid for their development work - that's what buying the game does. And if someone only wants the game so that they can play a particular mod, they still have to buy the game. So Bethesda have been making money from mods even when they were free, as every mod made for it increases the value of the game which attracts more buyers.

What we have here is basically 3rd party DLC. I develop a game. I release it and I get paid for it. Somebody else then develops new content for it at zero cost to me. I am not entitled to take three quarters of the revenue from that content. A cut, yes. It is my IP, I've graciously allowed them to use it for their own financial gain, it's fair I see a small percentage of that money. But the person who actually created the content deserves the largest slice of that pie.