Over $57 million has been paid out to roughly 1,500 people creating and selling content for Valve games via the Steam Workshop since 2011, according to a company blog post.
More importantly for game makers, Valve has begun supporting paid, curated Steam Workshops for non-Valve games, starting with Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and Dungeon Defenders: Eternity.
Until now, Workshop users could only make money by selling items for games like Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2; non-Valve game Workshops did not support paid transactions.
Most still don't, but a Valve representative forecasts "more curated Workshops to become available for creators and players in various games over the coming weeks and months" in the afore-mentioned blog post.
We've contacted Valve for more information on the new initiative, including what cut developers can expect to see of the revenue generated by Steam Workshop sales of items for their game.