this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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This is all fine and well, but am I the only one a bit concerned about how NexusMods is practically a monopoly in the modding scene? Why does literally every modder have to use a rate-limiting host as a platform, especially when Github exists?
Well, for one thing, Nexus gives modders a share of ad revenue. Under a different name, I have a mod that's a backend requirement for a big, popular mod, and that nets me a reliable few bucks a month.
That said, a good portion of the modding community also exists on Gamebanana. If you want BotW, ToTK or Source engine mods, GB is the go-to.
Wait I have a stupid subscription to nexus and idk why I haven't canceled it (used it for one month for some mod back in the day). I use nexus for all mods. Should I keep my sub then because all I care about is modders getting something.
I bought lifetime premium years ago when it was still an option and have never once regretted it.
The lifetime access was such a good investment. I missed a lot of other lifetime subscriptions, and am glad I get such great download speed.
Well, if you're paying for premium, you're still part of the site's profit, part of which goes to the mods you use, so either way shouldn't matter.
I mean, github does exist. It looks like people just prefer platforms with a pre-existing community.
Mods uploaded to github does really suck for discoverability though. There's the roguelike Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. The modding scene exists entirely on Github and you'd basically never find them unless you go searching for mods on their Discord channel.
Steam workshop exists as well, for games that support it.
That's even worse though. Plenty of games (e.g. Stellaris and RimWorld) are also available on platforms like GOG or, ugh, Epic. But if you want to use mods and you bought the game on any platform other than Steam it's fuck you.
Even if you buy Terraria off of steam, you can use steam mods. Sounds like a per-game problem, rather than a steam problem.
I know it is, developers can block downloads unless the user is signed into a Steam account that owns the game. But as an end-user that's distinction without difference.
https://steamworkshopdownloader.io/ never gotten this to work myself but I put the least amount of effort in as possible. There may be others as well but I remember when I did my research a couple years ago that it was a real trudge and almost not worth it.
I know there are workarounds, but this is true. There are very little games I buy (at least directly) through steam nowadays, because I didn't like what it became after the Greenlight/Direct debacle and I didn't want my library to be that dependent of them anymore.
I have playnite as a unified game library launcher (with GoG, itch.io, humble, Ubi, EA, even Amazon Prime and freaking EGS just for the free games), so where I get my games from doesn't matter much for me now.
But workshop integration is basically the only thing that makes me want a Steam copy for a game.
Though among the games in that case, there were Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, and for both if you get a copy directly from the developers, you get DRM-free and a Steam key. So, that's what I did.
There's a couple issues with it. I mean, it's simple for games where you're not using a bunch of mods, but at some point it just becomes excessive. Not to mention that when a mod updates, the mod will automatically update breaking your game sometimes, or when you're trying to play a game, a mod just doesn't update causing it to break the game that way too. There's just a lack of control that's often necessary when modding.
For beatsaber (which doesn't use steam workshop), the there's no steam integration and its a pain to deal with.
For terraria (which uses steam workshop), the modloader is smart enough to know which mods don't work with the current version of the game and disables them and steam lets you easily change which version of the game you have by using the "beta" options. Only time I've had issues with updates breaking things since 1.4 release was during beta-builds of 1.4 tmodloader (and those were generally easily fixed by going to the discord and finding the file to fix it). Since then, no needing to find files and paste them over the existing files, etc. No trying to install one mod at a time out of a dozen or two until you find which one breaks it and redoing the whole process over again. Pretty sure it also just uses the version of mods that support the game version you have, deals with dependencies automatically, etc.. The modloader will also direct you to things like the non-steam pages for mods (sometimes forum posts, sometimes discord, etc).
I don't think the steam integration is needed for such a seamless mod experience, but its certainly compatible with it. And terraria is an outlier because the game devs encourage mods and has a huge and dedicated community. For smaller games with devs that don't like mods, simply trying to keeping things working may take so much work, so that time that making a good integrated user experience is probably difficult.
Let's be real here though, Terraria is an unfair comparison considering it's modloader is integrated into the game itself and holds significantly greater support than most other mods with Steam Workshop support. (Oh and that the modloader is basically a community made mod manager anyways and is akin to using the community mod managers for the games mentioned below)
Stellaris, Rimworld, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Total War: Warhammer 3, Binding of Isaac, Dwarf Fortress, Space Engineers, Cities: Skylines, all of these very popular games with massive modding support are still plagued by the issues I mentioned above. And you know what? It has the issues you mentioned as well. Did you subscribe to an outdated mod? Oh, well, good luck figuring out which one that is. Forgot to download a dependency? Crash. Did a mod update and Steam just didn't update the mod? Figure out what mod that was and unsubscribe to it and subscribe to it again. Did a mod just update and Steam updated the mod, even though the update breaks save compatibility? Well, unless the mod author uploaded the older version of the mod, good luck trying to have fun.
Natural monopoly. Nobody else offers as good of an experience. The closest is ModDB and their UX is stuck in the mid 2000s.
I don't think that term really applies here. It's not like the barrier to entry for a webservice hosting game modification data is all that high. It's very different from the railway, waterworks and power grid markets.
Also there are at least the competitors Loverslab, Curseforge, ModMD and Modrinth from the top of my head.
Network effect creates barriers to new competitors, regardless of quality. Either for the upstarts or the leaders. See: Twitter. Once some choice is the default, anything else faces an uphill battle.
Adoption is a feature you can't design.
Indeed, it applies as much as accusations of monopoly. Two sides of the same coin. Really, it's not a monopoly situation or any kind at all. It's just by far the best of its kind and it has no competition.
Does any one of those integrate with Mod Organizer or do I have to download the mod (often also with an annoying wait time) and then point Mod Organizer to it. Do they have an API that enables "a new version is out" notifications, or do I have to hunt everything down manually.
It really wouldn't be that hard, but none of them cares. Nexus kinda has itself positioned well there as they would not have to support any third-party API endpoints in Vortex, but Vortex isn't even the popular choice for many games.
I remember using ModDB back then, I'm shocked that they have never updated their site since then
That went so well until your proposed alternative was Microsoft.
At least github is easier than the shit that is nexusmods
Also there are alternatives
Gitlab.. sourceforge..
Ive downloaded a lot of mods from sourceforge over the years
I know what Microsoft's general reputation is, but it's undeniable that GitHub has only seen improvements since Microsoft acquired it.
Embrace
Extend
Estinquish
They have not changed.
That only makes sense if Microsoft had a GotHub competitor lol. I think it was more about getting that juicy data and making copilot.
Yeah, an alternative using git would be good probably, but maybe don't use github. Preferably though, it'd be agnostic and just target some git repo anywhere. It'd pull from a description file for the page to ensure a uniform appearance preferably, and it'd show and manage versions from some uniformly named folder on the repo.
There's also steam workshop. Neither are shining examples of a free modding community. I think nexus mods starting out better and slowly enshittified but I don't know the extent of it.
Nexus hasn't changed much over the years. They just make a new mod tool every few years it feels like lol.
I think it's just the internet being the internet. Or at least how it's been for awhile. There are big sites that a lot of people crowd to and that becomes the default. Like auctioning things off online. Ebay. That was where everyone went to. Need to order a few different things online? Amazon. Are there other online stores? Plenty. But Amazon is seen as cheap and convenient.
Nexus mods is just the popular site, but the moders have other options.
We don't. My ultrawide mods get thousands of downloads and I haven't uploaded a single one to Nexus.
There's also the Thunder store!
That's kinda like saying PlanetMinecraft monopolized sharing world's, isn't it?
There's stuff like Curseforge, but it's only for some games, mostly Minecraft. The problem, if someone considers it a problem, is really that communities for games generally centralize around one site for their mods for the most part, and Nexus has garnered a lot of trust and therefore has more pull/inertia for communities working those things out.
As for Github, I believe the vast majority of mods have Github pages, but Github itself doesn't really have a UI suited for mod downloaders, and no real incentive to implement one. So sites like Nexus and Curseforge are still a necessity.
https://www.curseforge.com/starfield
Starfield mods (a few) on Curseforge currently
I believe modrinth will be expanding to be more than Minecraft mods iirc.
I was really hoping thunderstore and mod.io would take off more since they seem more platform-agnostic and FOSS-like with their integration with git and versioning (and for some games they have), but people just prefer convenience of nexusmods and steam workshop unfortunately. They just have a bigger community and better discoverability in the end
R2Modman and thunderstore.io has grown it's catalogue quite a bit as of late, but it's mostly (don't know if it's entirely or not) unity games. It's my favorite modding platform with features that make sharing modlists for multiplayer a breeze.
Nexus has the lions share, but only for some games, I had a premium subscription but still found for like half the games I mod that nexus either didn't have a modpage for them or that most modders for that game used other sites to host their mods
Their rate-limiting isn't bad at all, their integration into everything is excellent, and for games without much of a community Vortex is often the only mod manager. Their API isn't closed down, so Mod Organiser can integrate with Nexus just as well, and they probably would also do it with other mod sites if those ever bothered to set up a version check etc. API. They have an excellent search function.
In short: They provide a good service. Like the most annoying part about Nexus as a freeloader is the five or what seconds wait before your mod manager picks up the download.
And, no, their rate limiting really isn't bad. 1.5MB/s for people with adblock, 3MB/s for people without. How often do you download gigabytes worth of mods it's not like they're bullying you into a subscription.
But any rate-limit is worse than no rate-limit. GitHub exists and can provide the same features in a better manner with no limits whatsoever.
Github has other ways to make money, and Microsoft capital to back up everything. And granted Nexus could use a better bug tracker, but you won't see them getting into the private repository business any time soon.