One of the best–and worst–things about PC gaming is the support for mods, allowing users to customize their games to an absurd degree. Installing a mod isn’t always straightforward, and the more it remixes a game, the greater the chance of that title crashing, burning, and frustrating the user on the other end. Nexus Mods, one of the largest sites in the modding community, is aiming to fix that issue with a long-term plan to make mods easier to access and use.
Following a change in leadership last year that saw Victor “Foledinho” Folmann take over, the current boss of the site has penned an open letter describing plans to change the very nature of how mods are presented, shared, and accessed on the longrunning site.
“For going on 25 years now, this platform has been modeling mods as files. Mods are not files. Mods are systems. With dependencies, with conflicts, with load orders, with versioning, with environments, all that complexity,” Folmann wrote. “Everything that has been making you angry over the years can be attributed to one factor: the platform models your mods as files. That changes. A platform that knows modding as systems. Where the difficult parts are done for you: dependency resolution, setup validation, and change deployment, making modding more reliable and easier to maintain for everyone.”
Folmann added that Nexus Mods will be aiming to make mods more accessible to users through a site that will be transformed into a platform for this kind of content, not just a storage hub for the files. Folmann is well aware of the challenges involved, and he added that he wants Nexus Mods to be “Spotify-easy” to use while also serving the community with “GitHub-powerful” toolsets. The site already offers the Vortex tools that creators say make it easier to install and maintain mods, and it’s likely that Nexus Mods will expand on this software in the future.
It’s worth noting that Steam offers its own modding system that runs through its PC gaming client. Users have built custom maps, overhauled video game graphics, and even added new gameplay mods, with many popular games building active communities. The overall system generally runs like a well-oiled machine with automatic updates and easy installations. Overall, PC gamers have plenty of options, and it’s those wonderfully weird mods that make games like Pragmata, Crimson Desert, and Paralives stand out on that platform.
