Communities are a near essential thing for any game to build and maintain. They help developers in a multitude of ways such as bug testing their product by not only playing it but tirelessly looking for any problems that would hinder the overall experience of the game. Some communities even create modifications or mods not only to improve the game, but also add to the game’s longevity. However, at what point does a communities work stop being people working on a game that they love and become a group of people doing a company’s work?

There are many examples of a community doing a company’s work, one of which is Valve’s own Community Workshop. The Community Workshop is a forum built by Valve for the community where users can upload their creations to and for other users to download. The biggest hope for any user is to have their content be noticed by Valve and be put into their game, however, this is where the first problem occurs. The chance that Valve notices a user’s creation is completely independent in comparison to what the community wants/most recommends. Another colossal problem is once the user is fortunate enough to be noticed by Valve and has their creation put into the game, they only receive 30% of sales for that item. Also as time has gone on, Valve has come to rely on this workshop more and more; however, it’s to the point where workshop users basically handle all microtransactions for Valve while getting paid the absolute bare minimum.

In my opinion, I believe these creators should be rewarded in some way for selfless acts to help the game, but it needs to be fair. If a user has created a brand new way to play a game, by increasing the longevity and sales of the game significantly, then the user’s names should at least be in the credits. I believe that companies such as Valve are becoming too greedy with their communities and should either hire well known artists and content creators or reward them better.