great news for everyone or catering to the wrong crowd while leaving modding community in the dust?

you decide.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/10/21/portal-2-update-will-allow-users-to-create-test-chambers.aspx

Just spotted this over at Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31109/InDepth_Team_Fortress_2_Community_Contributors_FiveFigure_Payoffs.php

"Robin Walker, project lead on Team Fortress 2, said in the short-term, Valve is working on ways to streamline the process of getting user-generated items into the game by improving the tools used to create items [...]

The next step for Valve's user-generated ambitions will be to create a way for users to make and sell a wider breadth of items for Team Fortress -- level designers, server operators, animators, custom UI modders and even guide writers may in the future be able to put their items up for sale. "We would like to figure out how they all can participate in this so that everyone is making the community better in some way, and benefit from that work they're doing," Walker explained."

It may well be only the process of getting models into TF2 is being improved, but I think there's hope for the rest of the tools...even if it has taken / will take forever.
Discuss.

Hi all
The SDKIG public letter is currently in draft, and you are invited to help out on Facepunch, Interlopers or TF2Maps:
http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?p=24284643#post24284643
http://www.interlopers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=33491#p433340
http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?p=190294#post190294

Thanks for the amazing cross community reponse and remember to invite fellow modders if you haven't already done so.
You can always leave your comments on the group page, and they will also be taken into consideration.

Thanks for helping by joining the group!
We will soon come to a conclusion on what our first action will be.

The Interlopers Thread is open for those who are members of the community and those who would like to join now.
If you know of other forums that hold communitys of Mappers and Modders, Feel free to start another organization thread there.

Our goal is to show Valve as a "collective" that we need them to listen if they expect us to continually deal with their SDK.

If you know of a "Community" or just another mapper, feel free to bring them in on this.

In the event steam goes down we have an irc channel available to us: grab an IRC client and connect to /server irc.ircu.org & join #SourceSDK