Put your subs back in the video. YT's subs suck. Use YT's subs for people who don't speak english, but keep your subs in the video. They looked better.
Look at Borderlands 2. Couple years ago, the modding scene that is capable to be done now was looked at as an impossible task, nonetheless, people have figured out and now you can make literal maps, gamemodes, completely new weapons that doesn't replace vanilla weapons, etc in Borderlands 2. So if there is a will, there will always be a way as long as someone puts the time into it. Modding live service games is possible, just don't expect any bullshit repercussions from doing so. Breath of the Wild had a co-op mod built purely without the source code of the game and requiring the game itself for each person to play it which would entice more people to buy the game if they weren't going to do so before so they can play with friends. Obviously, Nintendo decided to shut it down because they in the legal rights, can do but ethically, they are the biggest bitches in the world when it comes to modding. Bethesda aren't trying to get rid of modding, they're more just putting in a paywall for mod creators to get something out of it which I can understand but as long as they don't create games that specifically make it impossible to mod the game unless through Creation Club, then I don't see any problem with that.
Agreed. Just last month I was modding Watchdogs 1. Both Watchdogs games are as AWFUL as possible to mod, but it hasn't stopped us. (Although WD2 is severely limited with how much they locked it down)
For all their faults, I think Bethesda is at least capable of recognizing the importance of mods to the staying power of their game's and their communities, and unlike EA, I don't think Bethesda themselves would be so quick to ban the modification of their games. They've put out modders resources for every game since Morrowind, barring Fallout 76, and just recently they put one out for Starfield. If they wanted to stop us, why would they give us tools to do it.
bethesda is also one of the few companies that use mods to scout talent for example they hired fallout londons lead writer to work on 76 which is one of the main reason that games writing has actually gotten better (its still not good though)
@@StygianIkazuchiThere are plebty of free alternatives to the paid ones as well. Like new armours and weapons. Search up Project Warfare and mods by the same author, dude is awesome
The sad reality is, that keeping a Game alive that has no form of monetisation is simply not "worth it" for the people who call the shots. The same reason electronics break faster than they used to, the same reason every year there is another "flagship" smartphone even though they could have released that three years ago and chose not to simply to have more releases. The people creating games probably want mods, at least I believe so, but the people at the top wwho make the profit, they don't want that. They want you to forget your beloved game and look for the shiny new release. Support your local mod creator, they are the developers of tomorrow.
Fallout quest and weapon mod author here, I don't usually go for videos like this because sometimes they don't get the full picture, especially in my sphere (there's A LOT of exaggerated vitriolic hate towards Bethesda), but since I like your videos I'll hear you out. I've actually taken part of Bethesda's Creation Program and talking to them Bethesda are SUPER pro modding. I cant say much cuz NDA but the supporting mod authors thing is what they are actually doing, supporting mods supports their games, they understand that it's one of the things that keeps their games alive. Also I think Sony's response to Fallout 4 and Skyrim console mods is a great example how they feel, they completely restricted any external assets, that means no newscripts (aka no quests), no new models, no new textures, no new music, no new voice acting. It's super limiting and has really hurt the modding scene on the PlayStation version of Fallout 4 and Skyrim. Good video overall, and I guess you're welcome for making mods (I doubt you've ever played any I've made haha)
Playing modded Skyrim on PlayStation is so utterly neutered because of Sony and I will never understand why they disallowed custom textures and models.
Bethesda isn't killing their modding community anytime soon and thats by choice. They've been open about supporting modders and even openly scout big mod projects for new hires like with FO London. The paid CC stuff is mid but really only gets attention from console players who dont even understand how a load order works.
Yeah it annoys me how many times people have claimed Bethesda was trying to kill modding so they could sell mods. That's not what they're doing because they may do stupid things, but they 100% know that without mods, they would no be as big as they are.
I'm pretty sure that was the reason Starfield is so... lacking. They said something about wanting it to be a sandbox for modders, so my guess is they made it as basic as they could just so the modders could do whatever they wanted with the game.
They're not actually a big fan of London because of how often the project lead did interviews for BBC just shitting on them for no reason. But the project lead is a huge narcissist so that might be part of it.
see, modding is WHY games thrive, Blade and Sorcery would NEVER have been the hit it was without the modding community, and hence the devs made accessing mods easier. mods are what keeps old games new.
If there's one case of game developers appreciating modding would be Jake Solomon (creative director of the XCOM franchise before his departure in 2023) expressing his regret at how XCOM Enemy Unknown didn't had proper modding support, so they developed XCOM 2 to be as mod friendly as possible, they even partenered with the developers from the mod called Long War to be released as a day one mod for XCOM 2's release.
I should mention that Solomon considered mod support to be a win-win for both the players and the developers because it would increase the game's longevity.
I was super pissed when H2M got canceled. Activision could've literally simply bought it and kept the original team. They would've actually made A LOT MORE PROFIT
I think it's hysterical that all these companies make modding hard for money... yet VALVe (with the exception of skin modding in CounterStrike) is the most profitable company in the world per employee and they embrace modding.
This is because these shareholders are morons who don't play games and therefore force game companies on making the worst decisions when it comes to making games. Valve is a private company.
I wouldn’t call them anti modding, their creation club went in a bad direction though I think, or rather perhaps sent a dangerous precedent. That being said, the people commenting are right in that they‘re pretty pro-modding for the very most part
Even Doom, the grandad of FPS games, is still very much alive thanks to it's modding community. Mods are also the reason I own a copy of Escape from Tarkov
I think the main reason Doom and Quake are alive is because id open-sourced the game's engine so modders have access to every part of the tech stack, and have a solid foundation on which to explore and expand.
@@rotbuxe2301 A very small, but still active community. Nowadays Doom & Half Life are the games that get the most modding attention in the boomer shooter genre
9:19 I disagree with Bethesda, at least, because, as idiotic as they can be, they know killing their Mod Community will be their Death Sentence. Otherwise, they would have pulled a Rockstar or Activision years ago and mod like London, The Frontier, New California, etc. etc. would have never seen the light of day let alone store pages on Steam and GOG
I'm slightly disappointed that mods for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. weren't mentioned, especially Anomaly which is still the #1 mod on mod.db Not that I'd recommend that mod specifically to anyone looking to have a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience, but the franchise is mostly alive, like you said, through the vast amount of mods created by players all over the world, and communities that established traditions, monthly and annual, coming together to showcase their work at the end of each year (which is mostly done through a Russian community - AP-PRO showcases). Still a good video though, I like how the topic was represented!
Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 were mods too(well Dota was a custom gameplay map in Warcraft III, done with its built in editor, but its effectively modding tools, it came from better times ...) Pretty much entiriety of Valve's output save for HL2 is mod derived.
Modding is something I got around in my early ages of Steam in 2009 when I was just 12, didn't have my own money and had only a handful of games like MW2 and Orange Box. But thanks to Orange Box I discovered ModDB and it's vast library of story mods that allowed me to enjoy more of the game in fan creations completely for free and henceforth keep me interested in Half-Life 2 universe. It's something I completely cherished and continued to explore in future games like Skyrim, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and currently Stalker 2. Mod support basically makes games live an infinite life. Not to mention that like with the Counter-Strike example some of them raised from mods to full-fledged commercial games like Black Mesa or The Forgotten City. We must preserve mods as a part of internet entertainment culture, give players a sandbox and some tools and they'll build you a Disney castle for free, just because they can. All the companies have to do is just let them and open-source their tech instead of depressingly falling into corporate greed.
This video focuses more on the impact that big companies and AAA studios have on the modding community, but... what about the smaller games and studios? When a game is being made, the idea is that the devs and writers have an "intended experience" in mind, right? While mods help the players to customize and alter that experience to fit their playstyles and desires... at some point, it goes beyond the limits of what the original intended experience was, right? Things like reskins and graphical overhauls or optimization mods are fine; in fact, I can imagine some studios might commend those efforts and say "thank you for solving this bug we couldn't figure out! We want to integrate this mod into the vanilla experience of the game" / "we want to write an article on this mod, and post it on the front-page, encouraging players to Subscribe to it on the Workshop". But other experiences as radical as... like, adding guns to Minecraft? Or co-op to single-player games (where the intended atmosphere was one of isolation, but having multiplayer removes that feeling entirely)? It's like the Ship of Theseus conundrum. When a modded game stops feeling like the original anymore, and becomes more popular ... is that a good thing? And is that something dev studios are comfortable with? I don't know, I'd feel a bit put off if I work for 5 years to make a game, with a small indie dev studio and a low budget, working to produce a game that would put us on the map, only to finally release the game, turn around, and see somebody say "Imma take the work you did, and change it to suit my desires" to turn it into something I didn't want to make. And then make a mod that ends up becoming more popular than the original thing I worked on. Or seeing copycat games that try to mimic the modded experience, instead of the intended experience made by the original devs. It's a case-by-case basis, sure, but still... The subject matter isn't black-and-white.
as someone who makes mods for sonic robo blast 2, i think the big reason why that fan game, out of all other sonic fan games, has survived the longest is solely because of modding support. when they added lua functionality back in the day, the modding scene exploded, and you see all sorts of character mods, level packs, and the such. it's even motivated people to just straight-up modify the source code (it's a doom engine game after all, they're obligated to release the source code!) and they made one of the best kart racers i've ever played (ring racers). and guess what? that also has modding support too!
big game studios never fail to forget that things like unreal, unity and godot exist and they can't control and monopolize everything in the gaming market. ultrakill was on most wishlisted games when it came out and had some... interesting haptics support (fanmade but endorsed by devs) as well as the newblood store releasing bodypillows of the characters
You're right, companies are killing modding for profit, wizards of the coast/hasbro feared that Baldurs Gate 3 would compete with their virtual tabletop product (which looks like dogsh--). And fearing this, they had larian neuter the mod tools for Baldurs Gate 3. (Although it didn't take long for modders to mod the mod tools themselves to allow for the creation of custom campaigns anyway!)
"A game with modding never dies" And that's the ultimate problem, how the hell can you convince people to play your new garbage slop when the much better old one still has fan-servers running, people making brand new mods that give a whole new experience to it, and so on? The answer is killing any possibility of longevity if it's not actively made by you, and only you.
Modder here. The recent avarice T2 has been up to is why I left the GTA mod scene entirely as I hate seeing a community be persecuted and that a company once known for its biting satire of American society and capitalism has become the very same fiends they used to make fun of. I heard somewhere that T2 through the Entertainment Software Association somehow still managed to scare off the Russian team behind the GTA Vice City total conversion by sending notices to VK, a social media site widely used in Eastern Europe and has also gained notoriety as a "notorious market" for copyright infringement, ordering them to delete any links trafficking the mod on the site, all despite a government decree in Russia waiving infringement to citizens pillaging Western media in response to sanctions. I guess that shows how ruthless corpos are no matter how we try to push back against their dirty deeds.
I think the only reason I keep playing the original Half life is because of its modding scene. really like the video, It makes great points about the gamming scene right now!
gotta love and hate paradox for two things love them because how moddable their games are and they don't really seem like they are trying to kill modding, it's one of the things that keep paradox games alive, there are atleast a bunch of mods that add more content than vanilla for each major paradox title hate them for their terrible dlc policy, where they sometimes take ideas right out of mods and implement them as dlc features directly
And hate them for their DLC being overpriced for what it is (almost as bad as Sims DLC). And hate them for their DLC being stuff that really seems like it should be in the base game at no additional charge, considering how their games tend to be pretty bare bones without DLC and mods. And I don't really see a reason to love them for their games being moddable. Seems more like a natural consequence of games that are, by their nature, not that complex, from a technical perspective. Frankly, just see a lot of reasons to hate Paradox.
@@femed1283 oh ye they do that too! the one instance of paradox adding mod features only goes for some EU4 missions (adding stuff similar to missions expanded) and one HOI DLC did it AFAIR also the mod spotlight is pretty cool
I'll never understand why so many companies hate modding, ESPECIALLY ones that are slow at putting out content (looking at you Darktide). Mods keeo games alive way longer than your DLC content, that's why Bethesda games that are old as dirt STILL are popular to this day.
I've legit bought Hearts of Iron 4, but not most of the expansions, because I wanted to play a mod for it, Old World Blues. Which is an overhaul mod that makes the game take place in the Fallout world. This is all anecdotal, but I think developers should really consider the possibility that people would buy a game just for a mod. Granted that may lead to some people calling the game out that it should've had those modded features in the base game, but I doubt Paradox was going to make a Fallout Grand Strategy game anytime soon.
That's why i've been sticking to half life, doom, duke nukem 3d and similar mods for years. Modding on these types of games will never die and will keep them alive forever. Screw modern game crap, old times were better
I've started working on a game in my spare time, a vehicular combat game with a psuedo-Mode 7 style (though I'm going to cheat and add extra 3D elements like walls that wouldn't have been possible on SNES hardware). From the start I wanted to make sure the game will be easily moddable for custom maps and vehicles (and maybe weapons? We'll see), and a big part of that is because I'm nostalgic for the games with big modding scenes and hope that I can maybe recreate that in a small way. Plus, as long as I provide a good enough base game, players will be way better at keeping the game fresh and interesting than I can. Without mods, I think we really lose something important in gaming that makes it more than a way to just kill time. Mods can be a way to turn your passion for a game into a more active, productive hobby where you can develop practical skills, plus it builds a community of people with a common cultural connection. Without it, gaming slips more into being a purely passive, disposable activity; consume product and get excited for next product.
Meanwhile the gigachads at GSC Game World had allowed and even supported TC and remake mods that don't even required owning any Stalker game (Lost Alpha, Call of Misery, Incubator, Radiophobia 3, OGSR and so on)
The first games I ever modded were Zoo Tycoon 1 and 2, you would be shocked how many mods people make for that game. It's soo essential to why those games are still loved over 20 years after they released, and it's BECAUSE Blue Fang Games added mod support from the get-go. These games don't even have a way to play them digitally still and people are STILL making dozens/hundreds of mods every year. Prime example of mods keeping a game alive.
One of the big reasons why Clientside Reskins and Textures was phased out in Counter-Strike, was because some players would make the level textures transparent, essentially just creating make-shift wallhacks by making all the maps see-through. I remember this was an issue back in the day.
I am 100% agree with you. One of the games I love the most is Madness: Project Nexus. Before the developers added steam workshop support, the game could be modded but, it was a pain in the ass both for the modders and the community because it was not easy to find mods and the ones you find had an incredibly high probability of breaking your game. After the workshop update (less than a year ago), the mods not only had became incredibly more accessible but, because the developers are still releasing updates to make moddding more accessible to newcommers, you can see even more mods that add something new instead of reusing already existing assests from the game itself. So, yeah, modding makes a game better.
One game that comes to mind is star wars empire at war, almost 20 years later its still being played thanks to mods. I have 1500+ hours on it and i can say that number would be signifigantly lower if we had just the base game which i do still love, it does show its age though. What i also love about the game is that the devs still put out one update each year, from my understanding these updates mostly help modders do what they do, you dont see that too often especially nowadays
As an active player of the sims 4, i can confidently say it has one of the biggest modding scenes ive ever seen, on oar with skyrim. The big problem sims 4 has is itself, as the game is so broken that getting any modding thing to work is kinda a miracle. That still doesnt prevent modders to make for exemple better romance system than the one offered thru official dlc. The other problem is that they are still updating it and introducing new content and dlc, which makes it very hard for modders ro keep their stuff working
At this point in the gaming landscape within the past 10 years I'd even go as far as saying I'd forgive some game developers/publishers who create half-baked games but also support & allow modding in their games because it shows us as gamers that they're willing to work with the modding community instead of against them and embrace new ideas for people who have a passion for the game. This video made me think of the original STALKER trilogy & STALKER 2, and even though STALKER 2 launched recently in an okay state the devs still welcome the modding community with open arms because, lets face it, if it weren't for community carrying the idea of the game for the past 15 years and developing projects like Anomaly or GAMMA, STALKER 2 probably would have never seen the light of day from it's original cancelation. But then I think of companies like Rockstar who just take it to an entirely new level and went from being a household name to tanking their reputation all in the name of profit. Not even just with modding, because we all know where that's gone lately, but RDR 2 was the final straw for me because Rockstar let their greed get to them when Red Dead Online launched and abandoned it soon after just so they could maintain their cash cow GTA Online.
Source Ports are overhaul mods, too. A brand new engine for old assets. Fit for modern machines! A popular example is "DevilutionX" for Diablo I. Or the dozens of source ports for Doom I + II
Amazing video, I'd just like to add another reason why I think games last is because of their story. I'm talking from a personal experience here, but for example there are games that I would come back playing without really knowing if there are mods for it or even if knowing I would not use any because the game does not seem like it needs it. At the moment one game that I can confidently say hasn't died, for me at least, is Call of duty 5 World at War. It's still a top game in my book for it's story, detail, message and boundary breaking in a good way.
There is a reason why i always comes back to BF2 for battlefield games. BF3, BF4, Bad Company 1 & 2 & Battlefield 1 was great, but can't beat how modding in BF2 keeps it alive & fresh with mods that i wouldn't thought possible.
Remember that one TH-cam video where people put all the Mario Kart 64 tracks inside of Halo Combat Evolved and had players race and fight each other with Wartdogs? That was a pretty cool mod
There is also another big reason and that is crossplay. Consoles forbid mods that demand scripts so it more often than not makes PC suffer. Cities Skylines went from a series that rivaled G-Mod in it's workshop to a crossplay forced system that forbids any mods centered around new mechanics (they did it to sell more DLC's). A good way out of this is what Farming Simulator does by allowing script mods on PC and simply not adding them to a consoles
Modding is also a great accessibility function. If someone doesn’t like an aspect about a game, wishes it to be different, or just outright remove it, mods can help Two examples of this are games I’ve played. Total Warhammer 3 had an update to the Dwarves, a rather defensive and passive faction, adding a gameplay mechanic that forced you to play aggressively. It was disliked, but mods were made to remove the function, or improve it Gates of Hell: Ostfront is a great RTS set in WW2. But when playing the dynamic conquest it can quickly go from a fun army game to tank supremacy. I didn’t like that, so I personally removed the sniper rifles from enemy units, to improve infantry advances. Flamethrowers are still a problem, but those I can just target before they are in range. While Snipers are often out of range, hidden, and impossible to reach without armour support Modding isn’t just what keeps a game alive. It’s what improves a games accessibility
Doom came out in 1993 and is still a hot topic. MyHouse became a popular trend, Brutal Doom is iconic and there's countless mods of every kind. Some even made it 3D. Over 20 years later and it still has a huge thriving community.
CS:GO and CS2 both support client-side reskins. You can find plenty of people on YT changing the weapons to ones from Rust, or WW2, or even changing the skyboxes on certain maps. Also, making this type of video without ever mentioning Doom is crazy considering Doom 2 is the most modded game ever.
9:22 no they wouldn't lol, literally skyrim wouldn't be playable without mods that fixed all of the annoying bugs and errors, bethesda thrives on modders being able to fix their games
Yeah I get to that later. That being said, my stance on Bethesda in this video was too harsh. I think their creation club was a little anti-consumer and perhaps set a bad precedent, but they’re definitely one of the most mod friendly game companies.
imo one of the best games modding wise is vintage story. the vs team not only has mod support, but pages about modding on the official wiki, a mod database on the website, a model creator for vs, and quite possibly one of the least finicky experiences ive had modding. genuinely it is so smooth and i wish the game got more attention
You forgot to mention how modding helped developers improve on creating content. Many animators that made skins for CS, now work for COD, Titanfall and Insurgency. Not to mention some developers started as making mods to their own studios or working even for AAA studios. So yeah, modding improves gaming turning bad or good games, even more enjoyable.
The funny thing Is that we can compare modding and not being possible to mod like One use bags and more uses bags, the single One mainly made by Big Company (not Valve tho) you'll play that time and throw It away, the more uses, instead of throwing It away, you'll use It again to not let It go waste
I love that Doom Eternal got official modding support! And hopefully they continue with that in the future. ... I do not have enough space to download the tools, and as the modding support is still in beta, it seems to conflict with Proton and I cannot play it :(
The first modded game I played is Atari 2600 Space Invader that was hack/mod into Coke Wins/Pepsi Invaders where they turn all the aliens into the word Pepsi👾
I love total conversion mods, honestly, especially the few completely original ones - Paradox's Grand Strategy games are a good example of those, a notable shout out to Anbennar for EU4 as an original one but theres tons of them across the multiple game series. One of the most highly rated Hearts of Iron mods is based on My Little Pony of all things. They add so much replay ability, and I think thats why Paradox is currently a bastion of supporting modding, though its not unique in that - its not uncommon for most patches or DLC to include new modding support/opening up systems. So.. there's still hope out there!
Activision is an example of a company ruining modding. Not only did they cancel big mod projects, but they also later took advantage of modding just to shit all over it and stay silent.
I really hope you break away from the source niche cause I would love to see how you cover various different games and their quirks or whatever. good work with this video!
The funniest part about The Last Of Us Part I is that certain assets just look worse now. *_Not just_* talking about aged up characters here, take a look at the bunny in the "Winter" intro scene! That thing looks like it came out of the PS2 era.
SUBSCRIBE!
Handwritten captions are available :D
Put your subs back in the video. YT's subs suck. Use YT's subs for people who don't speak english, but keep your subs in the video. They looked better.
PLAY THE BARON MOD ON STEAM IT S THE FIRST MOD OF RAISING THE BAR TEAM THAT GETS RELEASED IN STEAM 6YEARS OF WORK!!!!!!!! ALOT OF TIMELINE LOCATIONS
thank you for putting in the effort to add captions, truly
They can't kill modding. They can make it harder and more difficult to use. But never kill it completely.
Real, but let’s not make them get that far even
Androidferret? What are u doing here🤨
Look at Borderlands 2. Couple years ago, the modding scene that is capable to be done now was looked at as an impossible task, nonetheless, people have figured out and now you can make literal maps, gamemodes, completely new weapons that doesn't replace vanilla weapons, etc in Borderlands 2. So if there is a will, there will always be a way as long as someone puts the time into it. Modding live service games is possible, just don't expect any bullshit repercussions from doing so. Breath of the Wild had a co-op mod built purely without the source code of the game and requiring the game itself for each person to play it which would entice more people to buy the game if they weren't going to do so before so they can play with friends. Obviously, Nintendo decided to shut it down because they in the legal rights, can do but ethically, they are the biggest bitches in the world when it comes to modding. Bethesda aren't trying to get rid of modding, they're more just putting in a paywall for mod creators to get something out of it which I can understand but as long as they don't create games that specifically make it impossible to mod the game unless through Creation Club, then I don't see any problem with that.
Killing modding is like killing basic human creativity, and that's something that's pretty much impossible to do.
Agreed. Just last month I was modding Watchdogs 1. Both Watchdogs games are as AWFUL as possible to mod, but it hasn't stopped us. (Although WD2 is severely limited with how much they locked it down)
Every video game needs a realistic Gordon Freeman in order to succeed
Real
Yes
i think so
T r u e
Facts
0 days without a realistic gordon freeman in the thumbnail
You're so right dude, no idea why we didnt think of this earlier. All games really should star Gordon Freeman
2:03
"-Did you put a fucking mod into this thing?
-No"
Master Chief in Resident is peak modding
I LOVED that, that killed me when I first saw it.
For all their faults, I think Bethesda is at least capable of recognizing the importance of mods to the staying power of their game's and their communities, and unlike EA, I don't think Bethesda themselves would be so quick to ban the modification of their games. They've put out modders resources for every game since Morrowind, barring Fallout 76, and just recently they put one out for Starfield. If they wanted to stop us, why would they give us tools to do it.
bethesda is also one of the few companies that use mods to scout talent for example they hired fallout londons lead writer to work on 76 which is one of the main reason that games writing has actually gotten better (its still not good though)
And try to sell mods to you. 🔫😠
@@samfire3067 just don't buy the paid mods.
@@StygianIkazuchiThere are plebty of free alternatives to the paid ones as well.
Like new armours and weapons. Search up Project Warfare and mods by the same author, dude is awesome
problem with bethesda is that they're taking mods for granted. it's a relationship that's turned toxic
The sad reality is, that keeping a Game alive that has no form of monetisation is simply not "worth it" for the people who call the shots. The same reason electronics break faster than they used to, the same reason every year there is another "flagship" smartphone even though they could have released that three years ago and chose not to simply to have more releases.
The people creating games probably want mods, at least I believe so, but the people at the top wwho make the profit, they don't want that. They want you to forget your beloved game and look for the shiny new release.
Support your local mod creator, they are the developers of tomorrow.
So basically stopping modding is the video game equivalent of ‘planned obsolescence’.
@@maxmikester8185Pretty much. I will not be buying unmoddable games from here on
@@maxmikester8185 I'd say live services are the video games's version of planned obsoloscence
Fallout quest and weapon mod author here, I don't usually go for videos like this because sometimes they don't get the full picture, especially in my sphere (there's A LOT of exaggerated vitriolic hate towards Bethesda), but since I like your videos I'll hear you out.
I've actually taken part of Bethesda's Creation Program and talking to them Bethesda are SUPER pro modding. I cant say much cuz NDA but the supporting mod authors thing is what they are actually doing, supporting mods supports their games, they understand that it's one of the things that keeps their games alive.
Also I think Sony's response to Fallout 4 and Skyrim console mods is a great example how they feel, they completely restricted any external assets, that means no newscripts (aka no quests), no new models, no new textures, no new music, no new voice acting. It's super limiting and has really hurt the modding scene on the PlayStation version of Fallout 4 and Skyrim.
Good video overall, and I guess you're welcome for making mods (I doubt you've ever played any I've made haha)
Great insight, thank you! :D
Playing modded Skyrim on PlayStation is so utterly neutered because of Sony and I will never understand why they disallowed custom textures and models.
tl;dr: because of money
Unless Nintendo
@@StationOfbarny*especially Nintendo
Bethesda isn't killing their modding community anytime soon and thats by choice. They've been open about supporting modders and even openly scout big mod projects for new hires like with FO London. The paid CC stuff is mid but really only gets attention from console players who dont even understand how a load order works.
it also gets attention from big mod devs like kinggath who used it as an opportunity to both make money and flex his skills
Yeah it annoys me how many times people have claimed Bethesda was trying to kill modding so they could sell mods. That's not what they're doing because they may do stupid things, but they 100% know that without mods, they would no be as big as they are.
I'm pretty sure that was the reason Starfield is so... lacking. They said something about wanting it to be a sandbox for modders, so my guess is they made it as basic as they could just so the modders could do whatever they wanted with the game.
They're not actually a big fan of London because of how often the project lead did interviews for BBC just shitting on them for no reason. But the project lead is a huge narcissist so that might be part of it.
how to oversimplified his video:
Money and greed.
Is he lying tho?
see, modding is WHY games thrive, Blade and Sorcery would NEVER have been the hit it was without the modding community, and hence the devs made accessing mods easier. mods are what keeps old games new.
yeah uuuuh...
why no one keeps playing half life 2 then?
custom maps dont count.
@@Redmont_ because there's GMod, which is a modded version of Half-Life 2.
@@Redmont_? There are people playing it as far as i know also the hl2 is single player game once you finish thats it
@@mercenarydelta7351 its a different game
@@miloradpetrovic7244 then theres nothing else to do so its pointless to go back unless you didnt unlock all achievements
If there's one case of game developers appreciating modding would be Jake Solomon (creative director of the XCOM franchise before his departure in 2023) expressing his regret at how XCOM Enemy Unknown didn't had proper modding support, so they developed XCOM 2 to be as mod friendly as possible, they even partenered with the developers from the mod called Long War to be released as a day one mod for XCOM 2's release.
I should mention that Solomon considered mod support to be a win-win for both the players and the developers because it would increase the game's longevity.
@@Agent_Pol an absolute chad
I was super pissed when H2M got canceled.
Activision could've literally simply bought it and kept the original team.
They would've actually made A LOT MORE PROFIT
I think it's hysterical that all these companies make modding hard for money... yet VALVe (with the exception of skin modding in CounterStrike) is the most profitable company in the world per employee and they embrace modding.
This is because these shareholders are morons who don't play games and therefore force game companies on making the worst decisions when it comes to making games. Valve is a private company.
Valve's own games are close to irrelevant to their profitability at this point.
Valve also has like 1/5th the employees compared to other companies. That's how statistics work.
@ You do know that makes it more impressive, not less...?
@ You do know that makes it more impressive, not less...?
Calling Bethesda anti modding is like calling fish anti water, mods help Bethesda games thrive
I wouldn’t call them anti modding, their creation club went in a bad direction though I think, or rather perhaps sent a dangerous precedent. That being said, the people commenting are right in that they‘re pretty pro-modding for the very most part
Even Doom, the grandad of FPS games, is still very much alive thanks to it's modding community.
Mods are also the reason I own a copy of Escape from Tarkov
Even Wolfenstein 3D has still an active modding community....
I think the main reason Doom and Quake are alive is because id open-sourced the game's engine so modders have access to every part of the tech stack, and have a solid foundation on which to explore and expand.
yooo a fellow SPT enjoyer?
@@rotbuxe2301 A very small, but still active community. Nowadays Doom & Half Life are the games that get the most modding attention in the boomer shooter genre
9:19 I disagree with Bethesda, at least, because, as idiotic as they can be, they know killing their Mod Community will be their Death Sentence. Otherwise, they would have pulled a Rockstar or Activision years ago and mod like London, The Frontier, New California, etc. etc. would have never seen the light of day let alone store pages on Steam and GOG
I remember when people told me I was overreacting when I was complaining about the Horse Armor DLC in Oblivion...
i associate the hd gordon freeman render more with your channel than with the actual character at this point
based pfp
I'm slightly disappointed that mods for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. weren't mentioned, especially Anomaly which is still the #1 mod on mod.db
Not that I'd recommend that mod specifically to anyone looking to have a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience, but the franchise is mostly alive, like you said, through the vast amount of mods created by players all over the world, and communities that established traditions, monthly and annual, coming together to showcase their work at the end of each year (which is mostly done through a Russian community - AP-PRO showcases).
Still a good video though, I like how the topic was represented!
Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 were mods too(well Dota was a custom gameplay map in Warcraft III, done with its built in editor, but its effectively modding tools, it came from better times ...) Pretty much entiriety of Valve's output save for HL2 is mod derived.
Like L4D started out as mod called “Terror-Strike” for both CS:CZ and CS:S
I mean, isn't source basically just a really big mod of goldsource?
4:05 Uhhh 😐
Lmao
Modding is something I got around in my early ages of Steam in 2009 when I was just 12, didn't have my own money and had only a handful of games like MW2 and Orange Box. But thanks to Orange Box I discovered ModDB and it's vast library of story mods that allowed me to enjoy more of the game in fan creations completely for free and henceforth keep me interested in Half-Life 2 universe. It's something I completely cherished and continued to explore in future games like Skyrim, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and currently Stalker 2. Mod support basically makes games live an infinite life.
Not to mention that like with the Counter-Strike example some of them raised from mods to full-fledged commercial games like Black Mesa or The Forgotten City. We must preserve mods as a part of internet entertainment culture, give players a sandbox and some tools and they'll build you a Disney castle for free, just because they can. All the companies have to do is just let them and open-source their tech instead of depressingly falling into corporate greed.
This video focuses more on the impact that big companies and AAA studios have on the modding community, but... what about the smaller games and studios?
When a game is being made, the idea is that the devs and writers have an "intended experience" in mind, right? While mods help the players to customize and alter that experience to fit their playstyles and desires... at some point, it goes beyond the limits of what the original intended experience was, right? Things like reskins and graphical overhauls or optimization mods are fine; in fact, I can imagine some studios might commend those efforts and say "thank you for solving this bug we couldn't figure out! We want to integrate this mod into the vanilla experience of the game" / "we want to write an article on this mod, and post it on the front-page, encouraging players to Subscribe to it on the Workshop". But other experiences as radical as... like, adding guns to Minecraft? Or co-op to single-player games (where the intended atmosphere was one of isolation, but having multiplayer removes that feeling entirely)?
It's like the Ship of Theseus conundrum. When a modded game stops feeling like the original anymore, and becomes more popular ... is that a good thing? And is that something dev studios are comfortable with?
I don't know, I'd feel a bit put off if I work for 5 years to make a game, with a small indie dev studio and a low budget, working to produce a game that would put us on the map, only to finally release the game, turn around, and see somebody say "Imma take the work you did, and change it to suit my desires" to turn it into something I didn't want to make. And then make a mod that ends up becoming more popular than the original thing I worked on. Or seeing copycat games that try to mimic the modded experience, instead of the intended experience made by the original devs.
It's a case-by-case basis, sure, but still... The subject matter isn't black-and-white.
People wouldn't mod a game if they didn't like the game in the first place.
If only companies understood that making your game fun and moddable makes the game last longer and such bring more profit.
as someone who makes mods for sonic robo blast 2, i think the big reason why that fan game, out of all other sonic fan games, has survived the longest is solely because of modding support. when they added lua functionality back in the day, the modding scene exploded, and you see all sorts of character mods, level packs, and the such. it's even motivated people to just straight-up modify the source code (it's a doom engine game after all, they're obligated to release the source code!) and they made one of the best kart racers i've ever played (ring racers). and guess what? that also has modding support too!
big game studios never fail to forget that things like unreal, unity and godot exist and they can't control and monopolize everything in the gaming market.
ultrakill was on most wishlisted games when it came out and had some... interesting haptics support (fanmade but endorsed by devs) as well as the newblood store releasing bodypillows of the characters
That haptic mod was made by PITR, one of the lead programmers :)
Ngl i hope this video reach a million view this needs to be hugly widespread
You're right, companies are killing modding for profit, wizards of the coast/hasbro feared that Baldurs Gate 3 would compete with their virtual tabletop product (which looks like dogsh--).
And fearing this, they had larian neuter the mod tools for Baldurs Gate 3. (Although it didn't take long for modders to mod the mod tools themselves to allow for the creation of custom campaigns anyway!)
"A game with modding never dies" And that's the ultimate problem, how the hell can you convince people to play your new garbage slop when the much better old one still has fan-servers running, people making brand new mods that give a whole new experience to it, and so on? The answer is killing any possibility of longevity if it's not actively made by you, and only you.
That's one of the reasons why I love half-life so much. It has so many mods to play and so many reskins to use.
Modder here. The recent avarice T2 has been up to is why I left the GTA mod scene entirely as I hate seeing a community be persecuted and that a company once known for its biting satire of American society and capitalism has become the very same fiends they used to make fun of.
I heard somewhere that T2 through the Entertainment Software Association somehow still managed to scare off the Russian team behind the GTA Vice City total conversion by sending notices to VK, a social media site widely used in Eastern Europe and has also gained notoriety as a "notorious market" for copyright infringement, ordering them to delete any links trafficking the mod on the site, all despite a government decree in Russia waiving infringement to citizens pillaging Western media in response to sanctions. I guess that shows how ruthless corpos are no matter how we try to push back against their dirty deeds.
hey man, glad you did this. hope you are doing well
I think the only reason I keep playing the original Half life is because of its modding scene. really like the video, It makes great points about the gamming scene right now!
gotta love and hate paradox for two things
love them because how moddable their games are and they don't really seem like they are trying to kill modding, it's one of the things that keep paradox games alive, there are atleast a bunch of mods that add more content than vanilla for each major paradox title
hate them for their terrible dlc policy, where they sometimes take ideas right out of mods and implement them as dlc features directly
They give some they take some....
And frequent DLCs/Expansions are needed to avoid prescription models...
And hate them for their DLC being overpriced for what it is (almost as bad as Sims DLC).
And hate them for their DLC being stuff that really seems like it should be in the base game at no additional charge, considering how their games tend to be pretty bare bones without DLC and mods.
And I don't really see a reason to love them for their games being moddable. Seems more like a natural consequence of games that are, by their nature, not that complex, from a technical perspective.
Frankly, just see a lot of reasons to hate Paradox.
Thats weird, didn't paradox do this thing where they spotlight a mod in steam? I think i saw anbennar or imperium universalis a few months ago
@@femed1283 oh ye they do that too! the one instance of paradox adding mod features only goes for some EU4 missions (adding stuff similar to missions expanded) and one HOI DLC did it AFAIR
also the mod spotlight is pretty cool
I'll never understand why so many companies hate modding, ESPECIALLY ones that are slow at putting out content (looking at you Darktide). Mods keeo games alive way longer than your DLC content, that's why Bethesda games that are old as dirt STILL are popular to this day.
1:46 cheers for using my Waveycapes mod ;)
I've legit bought Hearts of Iron 4, but not most of the expansions, because I wanted to play a mod for it, Old World Blues. Which is an overhaul mod that makes the game take place in the Fallout world. This is all anecdotal, but I think developers should really consider the possibility that people would buy a game just for a mod.
Granted that may lead to some people calling the game out that it should've had those modded features in the base game, but I doubt Paradox was going to make a Fallout Grand Strategy game anytime soon.
That's why i've been sticking to half life, doom, duke nukem 3d and similar mods for years. Modding on these types of games will never die and will keep them alive forever. Screw modern game crap, old times were better
I've started working on a game in my spare time, a vehicular combat game with a psuedo-Mode 7 style (though I'm going to cheat and add extra 3D elements like walls that wouldn't have been possible on SNES hardware). From the start I wanted to make sure the game will be easily moddable for custom maps and vehicles (and maybe weapons? We'll see), and a big part of that is because I'm nostalgic for the games with big modding scenes and hope that I can maybe recreate that in a small way. Plus, as long as I provide a good enough base game, players will be way better at keeping the game fresh and interesting than I can.
Without mods, I think we really lose something important in gaming that makes it more than a way to just kill time. Mods can be a way to turn your passion for a game into a more active, productive hobby where you can develop practical skills, plus it builds a community of people with a common cultural connection. Without it, gaming slips more into being a purely passive, disposable activity; consume product and get excited for next product.
Respect for using the Half Life Alyx soundtrack
Woah. Realistic gordon freeman looks like my high school chemistry teacher.
What I've noticed with many newer games is a promise to release modding tools.... Then nothing happens.
Meanwhile the gigachads at GSC Game World had allowed and even supported TC and remake mods that don't even required owning any Stalker game (Lost Alpha, Call of Misery, Incubator, Radiophobia 3, OGSR and so on)
12:01 consoles used to be able to be moded but resulted in people jailbreaking consoles and cheating
The first games I ever modded were Zoo Tycoon 1 and 2, you would be shocked how many mods people make for that game. It's soo essential to why those games are still loved over 20 years after they released, and it's BECAUSE Blue Fang Games added mod support from the get-go.
These games don't even have a way to play them digitally still and people are STILL making dozens/hundreds of mods every year. Prime example of mods keeping a game alive.
One of the big reasons why Clientside Reskins and Textures was phased out in Counter-Strike, was because some players would make the level textures transparent, essentially just creating make-shift wallhacks by making all the maps see-through. I remember this was an issue back in the day.
1:53 Inflation Reference
shoutout to all modders and indie devs out there.
Couldn't imagine how YOMI hustle would be if there wasn't modding, probably a complete dead game
The only thing keeping Bethesda alive are mods for Skyrim and Fallout. They would never go against modding
I am 100% agree with you. One of the games I love the most is Madness: Project Nexus. Before the developers added steam workshop support, the game could be modded but, it was a pain in the ass both for the modders and the community because it was not easy to find mods and the ones you find had an incredibly high probability of breaking your game. After the workshop update (less than a year ago), the mods not only had became incredibly more accessible but, because the developers are still releasing updates to make moddding more accessible to newcommers, you can see even more mods that add something new instead of reusing already existing assests from the game itself. So, yeah, modding makes a game better.
One game that comes to mind is star wars empire at war, almost 20 years later its still being played thanks to mods. I have 1500+ hours on it and i can say that number would be signifigantly lower if we had just the base game which i do still love, it does show its age though. What i also love about the game is that the devs still put out one update each year, from my understanding these updates mostly help modders do what they do, you dont see that too often especially nowadays
As an active player of the sims 4, i can confidently say it has one of the biggest modding scenes ive ever seen, on oar with skyrim. The big problem sims 4 has is itself, as the game is so broken that getting any modding thing to work is kinda a miracle. That still doesnt prevent modders to make for exemple better romance system than the one offered thru official dlc. The other problem is that they are still updating it and introducing new content and dlc, which makes it very hard for modders ro keep their stuff working
At this point in the gaming landscape within the past 10 years I'd even go as far as saying I'd forgive some game developers/publishers who create half-baked games but also support & allow modding in their games because it shows us as gamers that they're willing to work with the modding community instead of against them and embrace new ideas for people who have a passion for the game.
This video made me think of the original STALKER trilogy & STALKER 2, and even though STALKER 2 launched recently in an okay state the devs still welcome the modding community with open arms because, lets face it, if it weren't for community carrying the idea of the game for the past 15 years and developing projects like Anomaly or GAMMA, STALKER 2 probably would have never seen the light of day from it's original cancelation.
But then I think of companies like Rockstar who just take it to an entirely new level and went from being a household name to tanking their reputation all in the name of profit. Not even just with modding, because we all know where that's gone lately, but RDR 2 was the final straw for me because Rockstar let their greed get to them when Red Dead Online launched and abandoned it soon after just so they could maintain their cash cow GTA Online.
Source Ports are overhaul mods, too.
A brand new engine for old assets. Fit for modern machines!
A popular example is "DevilutionX" for Diablo I.
Or the dozens of source ports for Doom I + II
Amazing video, I'd just like to add another reason why I think games last is because of their story. I'm talking from a personal experience here, but for example there are games that I would come back playing without really knowing if there are mods for it or even if knowing I would not use any because the game does not seem like it needs it. At the moment one game that I can confidently say hasn't died, for me at least, is Call of duty 5 World at War. It's still a top game in my book for it's story, detail, message and boundary breaking in a good way.
There is a reason why i always comes back to BF2 for battlefield games. BF3, BF4, Bad Company 1 & 2 & Battlefield 1 was great, but can't beat how modding in BF2 keeps it alive & fresh with mods that i wouldn't thought possible.
Remember that one TH-cam video where people put all the Mario Kart 64 tracks inside of Halo Combat Evolved and had players race and fight each other with Wartdogs?
That was a pretty cool mod
Even if new games don't support modding as much, it won't matter. We'll still have all the games that are moddable now.
There is also another big reason and that is crossplay. Consoles forbid mods that demand scripts so it more often than not makes PC suffer. Cities Skylines went from a series that rivaled G-Mod in it's workshop to a crossplay forced system that forbids any mods centered around new mechanics (they did it to sell more DLC's). A good way out of this is what Farming Simulator does by allowing script mods on PC and simply not adding them to a consoles
Modding is also a great accessibility function. If someone doesn’t like an aspect about a game, wishes it to be different, or just outright remove it, mods can help
Two examples of this are games I’ve played.
Total Warhammer 3 had an update to the Dwarves, a rather defensive and passive faction, adding a gameplay mechanic that forced you to play aggressively. It was disliked, but mods were made to remove the function, or improve it
Gates of Hell: Ostfront is a great RTS set in WW2. But when playing the dynamic conquest it can quickly go from a fun army game to tank supremacy. I didn’t like that, so I personally removed the sniper rifles from enemy units, to improve infantry advances. Flamethrowers are still a problem, but those I can just target before they are in range. While Snipers are often out of range, hidden, and impossible to reach without armour support
Modding isn’t just what keeps a game alive. It’s what improves a games accessibility
great video
but the editing on this one? *chef kiss
12:58 ARGENTINA MENTION 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
QUE CONCHA ES UNA MILLA!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Doom came out in 1993 and is still a hot topic. MyHouse became a popular trend, Brutal Doom is iconic and there's countless mods of every kind. Some even made it 3D.
Over 20 years later and it still has a huge thriving community.
THis video is amazing
thank you! :D
CS:GO and CS2 both support client-side reskins. You can find plenty of people on YT changing the weapons to ones from Rust, or WW2, or even changing the skyboxes on certain maps.
Also, making this type of video without ever mentioning Doom is crazy considering Doom 2 is the most modded game ever.
This is deadass one of the best channels on YT atm and I haven't played half life games since Xbox 360😂
9:22 no they wouldn't lol, literally skyrim wouldn't be playable without mods that fixed all of the annoying bugs and errors, bethesda thrives on modders being able to fix their games
Yeah I get to that later. That being said, my stance on Bethesda in this video was too harsh. I think their creation club was a little anti-consumer and perhaps set a bad precedent, but they’re definitely one of the most mod friendly game companies.
imo one of the best games modding wise is vintage story. the vs team not only has mod support, but pages about modding on the official wiki, a mod database on the website, a model creator for vs, and quite possibly one of the least finicky experiences ive had modding. genuinely it is so smooth and i wish the game got more attention
Let me guess - you're in love with the realistic Gordon Freeman render
You forgot to mention how modding helped developers improve on creating content. Many animators that made skins for CS, now work for COD, Titanfall and Insurgency. Not to mention some developers started as making mods to their own studios or working even for AAA studios. So yeah, modding improves gaming turning bad or good games, even more enjoyable.
War Thunder has both camos which people can see and "user skins" that are made of users and only you can see
You should make a vid about The Burton Equation mod🙏
I will probably do that in the future
0 Tage ohne realistischen Georg Freimann im Daumennagel 💔
"Daumennagel" lol
Also ich nenn ihn ja immer Günther Freimann, weil der Vikinger aus Spongebob >> Gordon im EN >> Günther in DE
@@CplShephard1 ich hab Mitleid mit allen, die Günther heißen
Can't have a modding video without the video creator installing the TF2 Pyro goonerslop skins
Not putting enderal in here was criminal
Honourable mention: S.T.A.L.K.E.R Franchise and big modding community of Anomaly
The funny thing Is that we can compare modding and not being possible to mod like One use bags and more uses bags, the single One mainly made by Big Company (not Valve tho) you'll play that time and throw It away, the more uses, instead of throwing It away, you'll use It again to not let It go waste
This is something we really need to advocate for.. without modding a lot of new game franchises wouldn't even exist.
Shoutout to all the modders out there who make old games actually playable on modern computers
I love that Doom Eternal got official modding support! And hopefully they continue with that in the future.
... I do not have enough space to download the tools, and as the modding support is still in beta, it seems to conflict with Proton and I cannot play it :(
2:04 took me just one second to realize it's resident evil 5 because of the lighting and obviously that first guy is at the start of the game
we went ONE video without realistic gorgon💔
The first modded game I played is Atari 2600 Space Invader that was hack/mod into Coke Wins/Pepsi Invaders where they turn all the aliens into the word Pepsi👾
As an guy named Anthony I can admit that I was just as shocked as that emoji.
I love total conversion mods, honestly, especially the few completely original ones - Paradox's Grand Strategy games are a good example of those, a notable shout out to Anbennar for EU4 as an original one but theres tons of them across the multiple game series. One of the most highly rated Hearts of Iron mods is based on My Little Pony of all things.
They add so much replay ability, and I think thats why Paradox is currently a bastion of supporting modding, though its not unique in that - its not uncommon for most patches or DLC to include new modding support/opening up systems. So.. there's still hope out there!
11:04 hello Stanley Parable Narrator
7:30 Sure pal, I believe you
Lol
hero shooters were a mod, tower defence was a mod, battle royale was a mod, all the biggest genres started from a couple bedroom coders.
Activision is an example of a company ruining modding. Not only did they cancel big mod projects, but they also later took advantage of modding just to shit all over it and stay silent.
If I’m not mistaken the brief Skyrim clip at 0:49 is my Video lol 😂
If I have to see that sigma Gordon Freeman image in a thumbnail ONE MORE time.... I'm gonna....
The biggest criminal is capcom they specifically made re engine hard to mod to prevent stealing even though mods still get made
I really hope you break away from the source niche cause I would love to see how you cover various different games and their quirks or whatever. good work with this video!
Thank you! :D hope people like this video
Also in the 3d printing most new printers are starting to use custom sheet metal and injection molded parts instead of 2020 aluminum extrusion
im actually an 17 year old anthony that lives in LA, try to guess my face when i saw the thing on 4:00 ...
Got ya! Lmao
The funniest part about The Last Of Us Part I is that certain assets just look worse now.
*_Not just_* talking about aged up characters here, take a look at the bunny in the "Winter" intro scene! That thing looks like it came out of the PS2 era.