So they need to invest even more work into something that is supposed to reduce their workload?
What makes you think that they did not acquire the intellectual property? I’m very sure that Valve has done that legally (in addition to hiring all the developers that were involved in the making) and not just taken a license. In CS’ example, they own the trademark which I don’t think they could if they didn’t hold the actual rights.
Mods are only as grey as you want them to be. Usually, the engine developers (i.e. Valve) give you the right to create things using their software. That means that things like TF and CS are fine, but if you try to create a Star Wars mod with Source, you’re in trouble - not from Valve’s side, however.
I doubt that will hold up in court. “But they’ve read the disclaimer that said that we can do whatever we want with their stuff without their explicit consent!”
Not necessarily true. This depends a lot on what your pool looks like. If you only have “trusted” sources (say, experienced artists and programmers, external contractors) then sure, you can be sure that the pool is small and filled to the brim with usable pieces.
If you’re as open as we are discussing here, however, you have to sort out a lot. Again, you need to gain the agreement (a simple disclaimer is, I will believe until somebody can prove it otherwise, not enough) from X different users all around the world (which probably means that you have to respect their country’s laws too, for example Germany cannot give away their copyright if I remember correctly) instead of only a few from sources that have already procedures for that.
You need to create a system for that. You need to maintain it. You need to have support (“Why can’t I upload stuff?!”, “Why was my nuke denied??”) the platform and their users. It’s not some sort of magical factory where you get stuff for free. It’s not going to be a “two minute run down” on a list. This is not a single person decision, it’s a company decision. As far as I can tell, they are somewhat democratic in the design process, where ideas are not decided by one person in charge but rather discussed in the team as a whole.
That means that there can’t be one person going “Oh I like that, oh I want that, ohhh a blue eyed white dragon bunny” and ding, it’s in the next release. This needs to be discussed in the team. Things to consider could be, for example, how well done it is, how well it fits into the final game / the art style of the game, how it differs from the idea that was already there (if any), if there is any “competition” that would better fit…
One of the most important laws in programming, game design and maths is that if you can, always fall back to existing resources. An airplane is something like a bus that can fly, a bus is something like a car with more seats, and a car is something like a fast pedestrian. That should not be interpreted as “lack of time” or anything against them, it’s a clever use of resources. You can’t expect to have everything done from scratch and let’s be honest, if you didn’t know that the raccoon was a reskinned bunny, would you have noticed that on the first glance?
But the community can and does stuff already. Those are just a few exempts of things that are already working, there’s lots more that is currently going on in the background.
We can already do a lot and since the communication started getting better and better, we can do more stuff every week - even without saving. Let me just ask this: How exactly would more content improve your game quality if everything you have would be lost when the game crashes or you have to restart it? I don’t want to make saving more important than it is, but when we get right down to it, you can play the pessimist card and claim that “the whole game is pretty pointless right now” - no matter how much content there possibly is.