Oh, I'm pissed at Bethesda, believe me! This is no doubt a trial run for future games and I think it sucks.
The revenues cut Valve gave people could have been higher, IMHO.
I mean, I temper my reaction to the 25% for Valve's games by looking at how the people making the content have taken it. We have some of the big name creators here on the site and they have all seemed enthusiastic about being involved in the program. They end up paid well and given an opportunity they wouldn't have otherwise.
As Dean Hall pointed out, a straight up percentage revenue share model is a much better deal than you typically see when contracted to work on someone else's product. When you look at a hypothetical where Valve pays someone $100 or $250 for a Dota 2 item set, that could sound fair to the creator and no one would bat an eye. Instead, with a 25% revenue split, they can get cut checks for $1000 or more instead.
Even though the scenarios are pretty similar though, I ultimately just don't feel like Bethesda fundamentally deserves 50% here. Part of it probably has to do with this marketplace hitting what is already a very old and established game where all of the community content already exists. It doesn't have the same sort of context of creating mutually beneficial business opportunities and promoting the development of content. The content's already there and is actually somewhat in jeopardy as a result of the marketplace. A lot of the content is fixing Skyrim's glaring problems. That's not a recipe for enthusiasm. If it had been introduced with a new product, like Fallout 4, with everything known ahead of time, the reaction would be different and an existing community wouldn't be having free things taken away from it.