Valve Hopes To Sell PC Mods On Xbox LIVE

14 Sep 2009 at 13:09:36 by

Valve has said it would like to offer PC Mods on Xbox LIVE for upcoming Left4Dead 2, passing on the money to the creators of the mods.

Speaking to OXM, the company said it was trying to figure out ways in which to get the PC mods, made with the free authoring tools on the PC, ported and distributed on the 360.

"[O[ne of the things I'd like to do is to allow these modules that are being released on PC to somehow integrate with Microsoft's system," said Valves Yasser Mailaka.

The idea is to sell the content on Xbox LIVE, Valve won't be able to give the mods away because "Xbox LIVE isn't set up like that," but I don't think any potential buyers would begrudge the original developer getting their money for the extra content. As long as Valve don't make a profit out of this, it seems like a great idea.

Although a great idea, there are still problems that arise from digitally distributing content on a third party platform, copyright being a major bugbear.

"We'll have to filter them, we can't allow any copyrighted materials, so it's going to have to go through a process. But we're hoping perhaps we can shepherd the really popular campaigns onto 360. And you know, if they are a paid system, perhaps that could go back to the authors. I think that would be a great story."

We'll keep an eye on this, but if this does come to fruition then it may open a whole new door to cross-platform content creation. Could this be the start of something special? We'll soon find out!

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