>If lone hobbyists can improve a game so much, can you imagine if a studio of 5-10 could make a viable living from modding?

If this was viable, you'd think that studios would consider paying small teams to continue patching and generating content for games for some years. </?>

Obviously this has happened with a few games, but one minor argument I've seen put out over the weekend was something along the lines of "why don't $studio just hire these guys?", and some sadness that it might happen even less often.