We were talking about the mod sales. Nobody is taking 70%, unless you counted the original game sale as part of the pie. Maybe we should.

The split as I understood it to be defined was: Valve takes 30% (arguably OK, but I'd argue for less), Game dev gets 45% (passive income hacker, woo!) and the Mod dev gets 25%.

I think it would be perfectly reasonable for Mod devs to get 45% of the sales of their own mods, but Valve asked Bethesda to define the split. What self-respecting PIH is going to give themselves or their own company less than 50%, really, if they are unilaterally the one making the decision about who gets paid and how much?

You are also right about one more thing, I don't have the first idea about selling games. But I would argue it's more work to build EITHER or BOTH a game engine and a mod than it is to sell it. In other words, Bethesda's cut should not be less than Valve's, in my humble opinion, and those mods would NOT have been for sale (or for free) without Bethesda and their game engine.

(Or at least, we would have entirely some other developer and game to thank for their share in this controversy.)