ZazCS

Well to summarize. 2013-2018 (ish) all collection skins were made by valve, then they slowly did some thru commission with some artists like with desert hydra, nuke skins, gungrir etc for a flat rate but it was valve asking artists to make x designs. In 2023 with Anubis was first time they bought skins from workshop directly for a flat rate (I was contacted for two) And same with train collection this year. But each time they had to write emails for every contributor, contract that needs signing by their lawyer before and after. So lots of time spent with emails, contract work. So this is actually the same as how it's been but now if you agree to these optional terms they don't need to write up contracts for your skin or email you. You also get to retain the rights to your work, which you didn't before in collections. Cases you get royalty as a licensing fee where you retain the rights and valve gives you % of gross profit in exchange for selling it in a bundle. Also without going into details, the flat rate listed here is quite higher than the flat rate in the past for collections. So the real change is: higher flat rate, you get to retain the rights. There's also the issue of when valve acquired the rights and an item happens to be stolen, traced etc that it puts the whole risk on them VS the artist so I think it's a reason too. Hope that clears things up.