World's biggest modding site announces new paid mods policies, with caveats—'as long as it isn't to the detriment of the free modding ecosystem'
NexusMods has announced a bunch of new policies to address the issue of paid mods, which have pleased some and hacked-off a bunch of people. This has been a long-running topic for the world's biggest mod site, as modding itself becomes more widespread and potentially lucrative for certain creators: These days it's all-too-common to see a neat mod then, with a sinking feeling, realise you have to sign up to a Patreon to get it.
«Over the past year several game developers have introduced varying paid modding schemes, including Bethesda's Verified Creators (Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starfield) and InZoi's Creations Marketplace,» writes NexusMods community manager Pickysaurus. «As a result, we've received a lot of requests for clarity on our paid modding stance and our paid modding rules from a number of our users.»
Following consultation with modders, NexusMods' new policies allow creators to link to monetised content, with a few caveats. The major new rules are:
That all seems reasonable enough, but this is the internet, and with mods in particular there is a large part of the audience that just doesn't have any truck with the idea of paying for mods. Clearly some of the NexusMods team feel that way too, because the post goes on to clarify why the above policies have been chosen.
«Our mission is to 'Make Modding Easy' and we strongly believe that paid modding is in direct conflict with that goal,» writes Pickysaurus. «Modding games is already a complicated process and forcing users to navigate a confusing split of free and paid mods to get their setup working does not represent an easy, accessible and positive modding community.»
There's also the potential legal issues over monetising mods, which in the vast majority of cases breaches a game's EULA (there are exceptions), and could get a platform hosting the mod in hot water. While NexusMods says it wants to build «a positive modding community where all content is freely available» it acknowledges that «some community
Read more on pcgamer.com
