You make very interesting and real points, thanks for your time and contribution.
Having some experience contributing and successful publishing dota 2 workshop items within valve,
In terms of quality control, in the end the community are the ones that highlight the items most wanted in the game, no scrounging through a ■■■■ ton of admissions. You’ll see the most popular to implement into the shop at the very top, and that’s what Valve looks into and confirm or deny the creation. They look at what’s popular at the very top not every creation that comes in or at a consistent artist/team that keeps developing high end stuff that got accepted in the past.
This is IMC Games, they have a business department within the company, and the items that do get accepted, are accepted because it fits all of their criterias and not much finalization in the model/art is needed; that’s the job of the artist or team to get right off the bat or very close to.
You’re right comparing the two was kind of silly, but I believe a community content related system can work. Of course there are problems that need correcting. You can disable selling from the community marketplace and keep everything in game on the shop at IMC’s prices period.
There will always be that fear of ideas being taken or used by the company, you just pray they have the integrity not to, I took that chance with Valve and I haven’t regretted it so far.
Reading through, what I just wrote is basically you’re alternative which I was trying to explain from the very start.
That’s what the steamworkshop is pretty much.
I think having concept art/illustration even 3d ingame assets made are perfectly fine. You underestimate the flexibility and talent a lot of these artists can do. Have faith haha. Either way the developers have the final say if it’s in or out.