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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nice! Personally I don’t have any particular issue with Nexus, but it’s always nice to see diversity. Monopolies are pretty much never good for end users.
My only issue with Nexus is that I have to create a login to download mods there. I don’t want to sign in to websites just to DL something. Curseforge is good for Minecraft mods and doesn’t hassle me with a login prompt
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
Not really sure curseforge is better. Its another of those sites with an sketchy bloaty overwolf launcher that makes you jump through hoops to load mods onto a server.
It’s concerningly hard to avoid overwolf in modding
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.
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.
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.
“These days, apparently anyone who doesn’t include five trans characters in their game and doesn’t let their products be influenced by political bullshit is a Nazi. What a world we live in.”
And like that I will not buy anything by this studio ever. Mahler is a whiny bitch baby.
Yeaaaah, I’m with you. What a wild comment to make. I was ready to give them the benefit of the doubt that the whole review bombing drama was just a case of having a bad day but this is something else.
I want to say we all found out he was a piece of shit in the lead up to Ori 2? Very much led to a lot of outlets doing the “The game is good but up to you if you want to support this kind of worker abuse”. And he just got worse and worse since.
I want to say we all found out he was a piece of shit in the lead up to Ori 2?
Eh, not necessarily? I’m sure there are plenty of people who just play the games and aren’t in the know of any drama going on behind the scenes. Heck, I’m pretty tuned in into what’s going on in the industry and while I remember hearing some of this stuff back in the day most of it faded away since I wasn’t particularly interested in the series.
I think it’s better to remind folks about these situations than assume everyone is familiar with what’s going on.
You already played the games, you enjoy them - it is what it is. There’s no point in beating yourself over (not) doing something without knowledge about the circumstances. No one is omnipotent and can avoid supporting every single shitty person out there. Just have fun with what you like and don’t support the guy in the future, that’s the best one can do in such situation in my opinion.
I don’t regret buying them, they are good games, but I don’t Condone shitty practices. If you restricted yourself to moral or ethic right companies only you would have nothing to buy sadly. You buying a game != you accepting the ideologies of the leadership of said game.
Just get games you know you enjoy, and ignore all the dramatics that are involved. Life’s to short to lock yourself down with it all.
Oof, yep this really does damage to my intention to buy his game more than ‘review bombing’ often you can tell if there is something fundamentally wrong with a game or not based on the actual content of reviews…Or if users are pushing for an adjustment. If there is a whisper of a trans or gay character in a game, there is so much pushback, so I don’t know what the fuck he is on about; Mahler is such a whiny snowflake, that probably needs to take his medication because his post history is looking a little sus. Like he unplugged from reality for a few minutes.
If Nintendo being “one generation behind once again” means I get more games like Breath of the Wilds, Mario Odyssey, Metroid Dread, and Tears of the Kingdom (just to name a few of the incredible first-party games this generation), then I’m fine with that!
But how will I know I’m better than everyone if everything isn’t shiny and I can’t see the reflection of my hot pink leopard striped assault rifle in every sweat drop on my enemy’s forehead?!
Granted, Nintendo does know how to make their sub par hardware seem better than it is. But can you imagine what they could do with actual up to date hardware? Might not be as easy a sell at $400-500 though like PS/Xbox. So if they can keep sub $300 system it’s an easier sell as a secondary system to the others or pc.
what they could do with actual up to date hardware?
It’s honestly hard to tell, given their history. When they first got 3D hardware, their first attempts resulted in a literal revolution in game design, with Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time changing how 3D games would look and control from that point onwards.
Their first time getting access to HD hardware? They didn’t have the experience and tools to design HD assets, which delayed pretty much all internal projects and resulted in several drought periods that helped kill the Wii U.
So if the Switch 2 suddenly had much better hardware… Would Nintendo make the most beautiful game you’ve ever seen, or would they stumble around and ship yet another booster pack to Mario Kart 8 with barely improved graphics? Would they struggle with balancing realistic ray tracing with their cartoony look? Hard to tell.
The switch is like 1/4th the steamdeck and much more comfortable as a handheld
I still use the steamdeck more due to a larger library, but for the games that switch does support it's usually much more comfortable. There's definite tradeoffs to top of the line hardware on a handheld, and Nintendo has known that since that beat out the game gear with the Gameboy, mainly due to battery life back then.
I feel like people downplay the size factor either because they don't use it for it's handheld properties or for them personally they have issues making it comfortable.
And honestly I don't see the issue with it being a gen behind. Games will still be made for it, and if it's a top of the line turbo graphics game I'm just going to use my Desktop. I probably wouldn't have used the Steamdeck anyway because if Switch is low range, steamdeck is midrange, and still not where my desktop is.
But the idea of great hardware and great software is still a mixed bag. And Nintendo's titles show that it's not so much the hardware holding them back but that companies won't make their games with the switch in mind, which is both fair but also gives expected results (such as the recent MK game)
That’s true, but using older, less expensive hardware had almost always been part of Nintendo’s business model. A cheaper console allows them to invest in game development–time, talent, and just money. If they used cutting-edge tech, they would have thinner margins (or even lose money on the console at first as Sony and Microsoft have done in the past), which would give them less to invest into game development. Nintendo spent an entire (extra) year just tweaking and polishing TotK; if they had thinner margins from the Switch, there would probably have been more pressure to release it earlier, which would have given us a less refined game.
I’d love it if we could have both great games and cutting-edge graphics, but at the end of the day, I’ll still take good games every time.
If they used cutting edge, you’d be able to not just play all 5 great Nintendo first party releases but the hundreds of other AAA and great titles that release each year on every other platform but which no one wants to back port to the Switch.
Frankly, comparing the PS5/XSX exclusives to the Switch’s latest releases I think Nintendo is doing better than the others. We are hitting diminishing returns as far as gaming hardware advancement goes. The PS4 was already capable of outputting great visuals in large screens, and even as far as 2023 very few games really needed more than that. The Switch as it is can even handle most indie and double-A games.
This is not even bringing up that higher definition games necessitate additional work and therefore have longer development times.
To me, a new Switch that is as capable as the PS4 sounds pretty good.
It is amazing how out of touch someone can be with reality.
Also, classic blaming the guy that just left. Maybe he contributed to some of the issues, but I guarantee there was a mountain of other issues unrelated to this guy.
Most of the execs never tried their hands on a game including this one. They genuinely have no idea about the industry and thought they had a hit game on their hands based on a trailer or something. It‘s truly baffling yet so typical.
When I was getting my engineering degree in the senior year we had some question and answer sessions with people from industry. The guy in class who thought he was way smarter than he was asked about going directly into an MBA program after graduation.
The industry guy said it was a terrible idea. Your engineering knowledge would be 2 years out of date and who knows if you would be a good manager. He said to get a job and get some experience. If you show promise as a leader a good company will offer to put you through a MBA program and you well have the real world experience to make the best of it.
So I think there is a real use for an MBA degree but only after some real world experience in your field and showing basic team leadership. People who go straight for an MBA tend to be the those who just want to boss people around and can’t handle real work.
Exactly. I would say an MBA is only useful if your undergrad degree was in something other than business. It is meant to add management skills to an already skilled individual. If you don’t have any other skills it’s just an expensive piece of paper that, at least to me, signifies essentially the same thing as being the boss’s son would. You probably aren’t very good at anything but always think you’re the smartest person in the room.
And the worst is, the C-suites get to fuck shit up, reap massive bonuses, and never suffer any con-S-quences when inevitable their way of running the company causes shit like this to happen.
What reality though? Companies are trying now more than ever to release the shittest cheapest games they can for massive gains. We see more and more trash making insane money. The reality is the average person will play a shitty game for something to do especially if it’s within their interests. In this case it just happened to fail so WB will fire a bunch of people and try something again. It’s a learning experience in the sense that they know they gotta raise the bar for the next release but it won’t be anything substantial.
I legit wonder what would happen if this argument is used ( in a professional way by a professional lawyer ) in a court of law. Like, could this legit be argued to be the same?
NAL but technically speaking Ubisoft would lose because they would be unable to prove that they were deprived of anything or anything was appropriated from them with their current stance. Realistically they would just pivot and find some other nonsense to try, like claiming a theft of their computer server’s processing power everytime a pirated game accessed their lobby or some other nonsense that would barely fly, but fly none the less.
What if the game was purely offline? Also, how can a pirated game access online lobbies? The last time I pirated a game was because Epic had a BL3 exclusive. And I couldn’t matchmake.
I wonder who would have to prove what. Ubi, that they missed profit (because you’d want to buy the game and didn’t) or the player (who’d argue he wouldn’t ever buy it anyway).
Well the moving party has to prove their allegations, aka Ubisoft moving to sue you means they have to prove everything they say. Since their stated public position is that they are sole owner at all times irregardless of circumstances, they would be legally barred (estoppel) from arguing that any one could hurt their possessory interest (rights and share of ownership). They essentially would have to shift the argument over, similar to a theft of service argument (not paying a train fare is a crime but you didn’t steal a train or turnstile). The question then becomes what service does ubisoft provide? Online servers that do content distribution seem to be the only thing. If you got it on the high seas you never hit their network, so all I see left with my hypothetical napkin math is all that random network traffic ubisoft games seem to always have (even offline).
There’s a number of cracked games now with online play enabled, you just need to make a burner Steam (etc) account to use it so your main one with purchases doesn’t get nuked if they catch on.
I’m not sure how you drew this conclusion, since most people I know consider paying full price to obtain a digital copy to be extremely close to ownership.
I liked Telltale’s Law and Order series. They can’t sell it anymore, but I can still download my digital copy because I bought it full price.
The whole argument in the article is about monthly subscription rentals.
When a contract ending almost caused Sony to remove all Discovery content from users last year, including digital copies of things people had paid full price for, the cracks between buying a digital license and actually owning something that can’t be taken away became more visible to a chunk of people. It’s something, but it’s not ownership, and it can be taken away based on agreements you may have no way of gaining insight into.
Audible is open about it. Well, if you dig through the fine print. Easy enough to rip copies but I’d say most people only realise they need to when they loose access. Maybe not, but $30 for an audiobook seems like pretty shity value if you’re only renting it untill you cancel your subscription.
Forgery usually involves submitting what you faked to some other entity in order to do something. Maybe if you illegally copied and sold that music. Regardless the penalties are similar anyway.
Incorrect. Last I checked, theft is depriving the original owner of their product or service. When it comes down to it, piracy is essentially making an illegal copy, meaning the original is still there.
The only reason they are going to New Vegas for season 2, is to lay down a whole bunch of Bethesda-fied revisionist history about the whole Nevada area.
They would want to torch the playing field, and make creating a New Vegas 2 that is worth a damn impossible, in anticipation of the possibility Microsoft might put Obsidian on Fallout too, after Outer Worlds 2.
After the studio closures Microsoft just did? Todd is probably, and absolutely justifiably, scared shitless with Obsidian and MGM Amazon’s ‘friendly’ competition.
Over the past 5-7 years, the AAA publishers have tried to use production scale as their new moat. Very few companies can afford to spend the $200M an Activision or Take 2 spend to put a title like Call of Duty or Red Dead Redemption on the shelf. These AAA publishers have, mostly, used this production scale to keep their top franchises in the top selling games each year. The issue these publishers have run into is these same production scale/cost approach hurts their ability to create new IP. The hurdle rate on new IP at these high production levels have led to risk aversion by big publishers on new IP. You’ve seen a rise of AAA publishers using rented IP to try to offset the risk (Star Wars with EA, Spiderman with Sony, Avatar with Ubisoft etc). This same dynamic has obviously played out in Hollywood as well with Netflix creating more new IP than any of the movie studios.
Specifically, the AAA game publishers, starting from a position of strength driven from physical retail have failed to create any real platform effect for themselves. They effectively continue to build their scale through aggregated per game P&Ls hoping to maximize each new release of their existing IP.
In the new world where a AAA publisher don’t have real distribution leverage with consumers, they don’t have production efficiencies and their new IP hit rate is not disproportionately higher than the industry average we see that the top franchises today were mostly not created by AAA game publishers. Games like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Candy Crush, Clash Royale, DOTA2 etc. were all created by independent studios with full access to distribution. Overall this, imo, is a good thing for the industry but does put AAA publishers, in a precarious spot moving forward. AAA publishers are milking their top franchises but struggling to refill their portfolio of hit franchises, most AAA publishers are riding the success of franchises created 10+ years ago.
It’s like all we heard about the PS5 was that it was super hard to get when it came out and then it kind of disappeared from our collective consciousness
XBox has always been a weird console. It never really competes with Nintendo because NIntendo always does its own general thing and also slides neatly into the kids and family market. So it competes with Playstation by default. Except Playstation actually has contracts with good studios to make exclusive games. What’s a non-Halo exclusive for the XBox? Back in the day, you’d play games like Gears of War, Halo (obviously), Fallout 3, Psychonauts, KOTOR, COD, etc. I can’t think of a single meaningful game on the most recent generation for the XBox.
I’ve seen them stocked in my local stores for the past year. The Xbox series X/S as well. I kinda thought it was like that everywhere now? Are they really still sold out and being scalped for crazy mark up prices where you live?
I might be jaded, but I’d wager that whoever buys it, is going to be worse than having Epic as a rich daddy who is focused on and making money through his core business and doesn’t really know what to do with Bandcamp. Entities that buy it are almost certainly going to squeeze harder at the expense of user experience.
This idiot brought this on himself AND is probably at least partially responsible for the recent crackdown on Switch emulation by Nintendo. I won’t shed a tear for him.
Not to defend leakers even a bit and Nintendo has every right to go after them legally. However, the emulation crackdown is just Nintendo flexing their legal team on small devs who’ve done everything they can to discourage leaks from spreading within their limited reach. It’s 100% on Nintendo and they themselves are acting in a legal gray zone to bully 3rd parties into giving up. If any of the emulation teams had the resources to simply deal with big N, the situation would probably look a little different.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, yes leakers are in the wrong but no, they didn’t kill emulation with their actions even when it provoked Nintendo.
The first switch emulator that was taken down (I think yuzu), was justified by Nintendo as copyright infringement because people (including moderators) were sharing copyrighted material openly on their public discord. BIOS files, links to games, and early leaks.
The more recent one (Ryujinx I think) was the one that did things right, so Nintendo didn’t have that copyright leg to stand on. So instead (according to the maintainer of the Mac fork) they sent goons to the house of the head dev in Brazil… to “talk” him into taking it down.
I read an article about a leather artist who recycled secondhand Gucci (I think? It was a big name fashion brand is all I recall) bags into wallets and things like that, and despite everything being clearly labeled to make sure nobody could mistake it for an official product, they had a similar experience. I wish I could find the article again, because I don’t remember what came of it and my search skills are failing me.
In 1999, Nintendo got a woman in Japan arrested over - and get this - sharing erotic fan art. I’ve read they also might’ve sent private detectives to stalk after her before the arrest, but couldn’t find anything quickly. Anyway it sparked a big shit storm and a debate about what copyright holders are allowed to do, legally and morally.
It’s like how back when the Euro or the Pound were worth nearly 2x what the dollar was, a new device or piece of hardware would sell for $399/€399/£399.
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