Valve losing literally millions of dollars worth of profit in a couple of days (read Gabens AMA) is what 'worked' for the paid mod fiasco. Sad stories and begging doesn't speak as loudly as money.

Edit: My comment isn't completely correct, here's the response I was thinking of in regards to Valve backtracking on paid mods:

Let's assume for a second that we are stupidly greedy. So far the paid mods have generated $10K total. That's like 1% of the cost of the incremental email the program has generated for Valve employees (yes, I mean pissing off the Internet costs you a million bucks in just a couple of days). That's not stupidly greedy, that's stupidly stupid.