Popular modding site Nexus Mods recently announced that game mods can no longer be deleted from the site starting next month. The company is firm about its decision even after community backlash.
If you are fond of playing Bethesda games, then you probably know that you can download and install mods that can add new features and improvements to the games.
Most of the game mods for Fallout 4 and Skyrim, for example, can be downloaded from Nexus Mods. While there are installation instructions for each mod, some people are not tech-savvy enough to understand them. Fortunately, folks at Nexus Mods want to simplify the process. Thus, they will be launching the new “Collections” feature next month.
What Is It?
The company’s proposed Collections feature will simplify the entire process of adding and installing mods to the games that you play.
You can search any mods that you want and the feature will tell you if there are any incompatibilities with the things you’ve chosen before installation.
This feature can be used for free, though paying a subscription fee every month gives you certain perks, such as being able to peruse the website free of ads and faster download speeds.
Community Backlash
While the creation of the Collections feature would provide a lot of good benefits for the end-user, the mod creators are not happy with this. The main reason why is mod developers can no longer delete any of their creations once the feature goes live next month.
In a blog post, Stefan “BigBizkit” Masic, community manager at Nexus Mods, said that the new system would make it impossible for mod creators to remove or delete their mods from the site.
Instead, all of their mods will be archived which means that they are inaccessible unless directly requested via the API. Unfortunately, if by some chance that the mods are part of a curated list, it would always be accessible to most people that go to the platform.
Mod authors who are against the imminent change have a month's grace period where they can choose to delete their creations before the feature becomes available. BigBizkit explained why they had to do it this way.
“If we did provide an opt-out option then any mod author opting any mod/file out for any reason could essentially torpedo the whole system, undermining collections from the very beginning,” he said.
There is a lot of backlash concerning the company’s decision. But, one of the major reasons why this is problematic for mod developers is that premium subscribers of the site could bypass the developer’s page, thereby benefiting the site instead of the mod developers themselves.
User @Hobbes77 replied that what the company intends to do is a bad deal for mod authors in general. They could receive fewer donations due to less traffic and interaction, but more importantly, the authors will be stripped of their ownership of the mods and their creative control over them.
While mod creators are definitely not happy with this, some users point out that this move might benefit the community as a whole.
Redditor @scotty9090 said that this “Collections'' feature is quite similar to Curseforge’s model for Minecraft modding. They’ve added that this is a good thing since most people are willing to pay for mod packs anyway.
What do you think? Could this new Collections feature truly benefit the community as a whole?
