It is impossible to imagine Steam without Steam Workshop and it is surely difficult for any sandbox game to survive the ongoing competition without the support of this system. Thousands of players create and share their projects in countless games on daily basis, although currently it is getting more and more difficult to receive any positive ratings, popularity or reasonable distribution, even despite putting lots of effort into work. The answer to the question of why this happens sadly lies in Steam Workshop's rating system and its purposeful misuse by many users, uncluding content creators themselves.

First of all, it is necessary to remark that the dislike button heavily despised by many has equal impact on workshop submissions compared to the like button, whilst the percentage system is technically fair and completely justified, provided that users themselves rate workshop creations fairly. However, any game community is far from ideal as it usually has enough individuals eager to exceed their competitors without spending much time or putting enough effort into their products. Consequently, many good workshop items get affected by dislikers taking advantage of their competitor's decreasing popularity and falling positive rating percentage. The effect of such actions may become even more severe if such attacks are organized by groups of actual users or bots.

Secondly, it was already proven that no positive changes are to be expected, considering the fact that Steam Workshop is a platform supported primarily by game communities that do not profit from their activity in any way. Hence, there is no urgent necessity to rework anything. Certainly, there are people attaching links to their donation websites in the description section, though there is still no straight Steam involvement and the numbers of such workshop creators are very few. Needless to say that there are even less people actually willing to give their money to random content-makers on the Internet for no clear reason, as their content is still free. It is also impossible to remove the dislike button for obvious reasons.

Thirdly, the current state of things is becoming far worse. Several so-called "Dislike-Wars" occurred between 2020 and 2021, involving groups of people actively disliking each-others' workshop submissions. Unfortunately, such accidents tend to become more and more widespread every new year and people constantly search for new ways to exploit the system.

In conclusion, I can only say that it is rather disappointing to realize that the only choice users have left is to adapt to these new harsh conditions and create further, hoping that there are still people who appreciate content creators' efforts.