While Valve backtracks, Space Engineers developer sets up $100K fund for modders

You may not think that modders should make money for their work, but at least one developer does.

Keen Software, the indie studio responsible for the Minecraft-in-zero-gravity-like Space Engineers, has introduced a $100,000 fund to support people who want to build modifications for the game. Space Engineers is an Early Access release on the Steam digital-distribution store, but despite its unfinished state, its community has already built more than 3,000 mods and 100,000 items for it. This makes it one of the top-five releases in terms of available add-ons in the Steam Workshop, which is a centralized hub for player-created mods and items. Providing a developer-backed fund for modders represents a different take on reimbursing the community for its work. This comes just a few weeks after Valve, which owns and operates Steam, tried to introduce a way for gamers to pay for mods in publisher Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim role-playing game. That initiative crashed and burned spectacularly, and Valve backtracked on its plan.