What would be really naive would be to not learn from it at all.
Luckily, Valve is not that naive.

Just because they will learn something from it and tried to avoid the flak that came with making a longestablished game with a huge modding community the first testsubject doesn't mean that "paid mods" as an idea is dead. Far from it.

Just as somebody above mentioned before, they most probably will introduce it the other way around, with new games and smaller titles with less fanbase. You really think this kind of outrage will survive the second, third or fourth try? Like always, people will warm up to the idea, the service provider (Valve) and the publishers will come up with cuts and conditions that make it easier to swallow for the community and mod makers will start to see the positive side to it.

Party in 10 years, IF Valve hasn't tried to bring back "paid mods" by then. Right now they do what any big company would do: Weasel out of it with sad excuses, lay low for a while until the stupid masses forgot anything ever happened, lick their wounds and come up with a better plan for "world domination". If they are still convinced the concept is worth the hassle, they will be back for more.

"World Domination" .. Seriously??

Because they want to allow paid mods?

Okay, I didn't made it clear, but that part was half-"tongue in cheek"...

I mean the general strategy is what big companies do.... the words to describe it where meant as joke. Might have needed to add a smiley to make it clear. Or just leave the jokes for a different thread. Making fun of a topic that seems to provoke such a heated reaction from people most probably is no appropriate anyway.

It didn't occur to me that you were joking

Let me quote from http://gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20150428/242178/Mods_Salutary_Neglect_and_Storks.php :

there's a way for Valve and Bethesda to do this right, and if they pull it off everyone will be better off. Let's hope they figure it out.

Sorry about that... its the "straight face while telling a joke" problem

I am pretty sure they will figure it out. Eventually. Might not happen anymore for Skyrim, but maybe the next Bethesda game on Steam?

If I would guess what happened here, its Valve applying "lean startup" methodics to find out if a new way to generate revenue is feasible. Come up with a plan, put it on steam immidiatly, just for a limited group of customers (In this case Skyrim players), gather data on wheter its feasible or not. Fail fast, persevere or pivot. In this sense, their plan worked flawlessly. They were able to test the market, and got a HUGE amount of feedback (there is no negative feedback.... only no feedback, which would mean the service wouldn't have been used. The amount of flak they got means "yes, there is a ton of interest in skyrim mods (thus a huge potential market) and no, we need to find a different way to create revenue out of that untapped potential")

I highly doubt they will just abandon the idea (because of the huge interest the whole thing generated), and I also don't think they try to persevere (no company can hope to weather a shitstorm of this size long enough for it to die)... in the end they will have to pivot. "lean startup" methodics would dictate to come up with a new plan and implement/test it as soon as possible, but seeing how Valve is no startup anymore and can only do so much testing on their existing customer base per month, most probably they will wait some time before they try again (and hopefully use the time to both improve the implementation as well as the marketing side).

Facebook does that all the time... testing different ways of creating additional revenue on their existing user base. Sometimes it is bad enough to actually create a shitstorm of its own.