NexusMods Changes Hands
nexusmods.com
nexusmods.com
Both of those are preferable to the relative hell that is dealing with nexus mods.
Steam as a platform is very open in many ways. Likely not intentional, just holes that never got plugged.
Most of the pirated steam clients just lie and say you're always playing a free Steam game that everyone owns and use that to backchannel all of the steam features like messaging, p2p, etc.
Last I checked they even had some rigged up system for achievements since some games interact with them in ways that are needed.
I don't have an oar in this fight - my comment about pirated games was mostly tongue in cheek - but I am glad the main mod site isn't tied to owning the game on one particular store.
At least I didn't found a way, and that one reason alone is enough for me to avoid the Workshop.
I made the mod for the Divinity: Original Sin that changes a few bytes in the game XML files to allow for 4 players in game instead of just 2, since it was mostly supported but probably removed for console porting simplicity. This is a braindead simple mod that just needs to find some XML tag inside the embedded EXE/DLL file and update it. I didn't even have to update any checksums, etc.
When I published the mod I chose to target the hashes/offsets of the Steam EXE since that was what everyone had. So, while I didn't target the workshop (as this modification could not be done with it) I did target Steam end-users.
There are lots of ideological and practical concerns with DRM, I won't list them here other than to say game players want to be in control of their machines and their experience, not let game publishers control their machines.
2. Steam policy is that you can only run the very latest release of a game (it will update when you go online, and you can't remain offline forever). It takes away your choice to reject publishers bad updates - for example, when 2K forcibly added their marketplace/launcher malware to Bioshock games, breaking them on Linux, Steam was their henchman/goon forcing it on everyone.
[*] Not everbody! https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g...
You don't actually need a steam account or the client - with SteamCMD you can have CLI access to all the mods there, as well as download any mod (or, for example, dedicated server hosted via Steam) to a custom location.
As for what's bad with Steam Workshop: - No built-in way to host multiple versions of a mod or to revert to an old version.
- Very unreliable reinstalls (you might think you deleted a mod, and yet there are leftovers - and at least historically they liked to remain even over fresher files).
- Somewhat arcane directory structure (that makes fixing the above harder than it should be).
Not 100% correct, some are restricted to accounts that have licenses for the game. Same with some dedicated servers, you'll get an error ("Failed to install app "xxxxxx" (No subscription)" ) if you try downloading anonymously
It works okay, but it's a little clunky. Discoverability is weird. It's concept of "recently trending" etc produces some dubious recommendations.
Actually installing mods is kind of okay, but it doesn't handle pre-requisites very well. It'll tell you that you're missing pre-reqs, but it doesn't offer to install them.
It's a positive feedback issue, where because games don't tend to use workshop, it doesn't get much love from valve, and therefore games avoid it.
I don't know how much workshop allows developers to do curation either, so perhaps games would rather partner with a platform they can better influence mod curation.
It's definitely preferable as a user compared to the worst-of-all-worlds that is Stardew Valley modding. There you have a combination of "Here, download this exe, it's fine we promise" (SMAPI), and nexus mods for the discoverability / install / updates of the mods themselves.
I'm usually opposed to Steam on principle, opting instead for DRM free options for my games, but it's basically impossible to maintain any decent amount of mods without a manager like what Steam Workshop offers
Saying that only half jokingly.
The truth is that Workshop is worse and aimed ONLY at Steam. So why would anyone bother.
There is a bigger question that is unsolved, both ethically and legally. If someone makes a Skyrim mod: (a) should the creator of the mod be allowed compensation and (b) should the game developer be entitled to garnish some amount?
I have my own opinions, but I think the community doesn't really trust that a mod put on Steam will be available tomorrow for the price and under the conditions the mod creator envisioned.
I doubt any game developer would want the burden of being liable to maintain backward compatibility for old mod APIs to support third party mods, but if they take a cut of any money then they ought to be responsible for maintaining that.
Part of the reason KSP has ironically had a modding renaissance is because the community knows that there won't be any updates which could break some of the more ambitious mods being made.
b) no, why? does the carmaker get a cut from the unbranded accessories? If anything, it should be the other way round as the Oblivion reboot proves.
Sure it makes it easy for people who own the game on Steam, but what about everyone else?
Also, as popular as Steam is, their workshop section is pretty awful. The search seems to have been cobbled together and has awful matching, the discoverability of mods is dire, and they're still using the same antiquated poor UX for discussions as they were over a decade ago.
Nexus doesn't help you to manage your modlists, but at least it is smart enough to step back and let you manage them however you want to.
It's used because it has the most existing content, not because it does anything especially well (download speed limits are irritating and to me make no sense).
Possibly for the very experienced devs/games on HN who are making their own mods Nexus was limiting and annoying.
For me it was the level of difficulty just low enough I didn't have to work to enjoy mods. I remember trying to install mods on Halo CE pre mod managers and it was a nightmare.
Did Nexus solve all of that? No but it was an easy enough experience that I could know one website, one tool, and be able to mod my games.
For the normies. For myself Nexus was a fixture throughout my teens and into my adult life.
I'm very thankful for all the hard work they put in.
It's impossible to keep everyone happy all of the time, but for some people like myself it just worked and we were able to enjoy it.
But what you two seem to be talking about, is the relatively new mod manager that Nexus also has, which basically allows you to one-click install mods.
I think many comments talk only about the website (in isolation), while both of you are talking about the mod manager, hence the mismatch in experience.
I'm convinced a ton of people commenting here haven't even used Nexus in years or convinced themselves they're "power users" who don't need to use a launcher, just to blame Nexus on the subsequent pain.
Some of them are clearly commenting in bad faith though, and have never used Nexus and are just slinging mud because of their audacity to moderate offensive content or inflammatory users.
I loved the change a few years ago that prevented mod authors from removing mods. I use Wabbajack, an amazing program where modders compile lists of mods and bundle them with compatibility patches to make everything work nicely. The Wabbajack program automatically downloads and sets up everything.
But random disappearing mods created endless work for the Wabbajack modders, because they would have to adjust lists and compatibility patches every time someone removed an old version. Mod lists would go away for days, weeks, or forever because someone removed some tiny mod from Nexus for no good reason. It’s so much better now.
Congratulations! You are going to be so happy moving forward!
Yeah, true, ThePirateBay is excellent evidence that absolutely everything MUST be driven by profits.
I hate capitalism as much as the next guy but the comment i was replying to was about the hope of the new owners being less profit driven, you cannot be a non profit driven company, and the problem do not rely on the owner of the business but with the system and insentives at play.
Please do not deform my words or this conversation to try to make yourself look smarter than others.
I don't see a near future where every work hour, gigabite, watt and kb of data that is currently required to make nexusmods work every day will be obtained without the insentives of 9-5, salaries and other profit type shit. TPB heavily relies on a low maintenance structure, and hyper dedicaded users relying on the intense belief that knownledge and culture should be free. All things the 'prettier textures' industry do not have.
If you know of or have plans to create a free equivalent of NexusMods, maybe relying on open source technologies and torrents, feel free to let me know, it sounds very interesting altho i think it will remain niche.
Really surprised such a big community hadn't gotten sick of it already and built an alternative.
There is already, probably the biggest contender at the moment would be r2modman/Thunderstore, which is a relatively game-agnostic modding website + mod manager. Seems a lot more "open" (both in terms of source code and community) than Nexus ever was.
As implied by negativity in the prior sentence, Overwolfs stuff is pretty awful to use; compared to r2modman, it feels like you're installing a PUP instead of a mod manager. There's lots of ads and it's pretty clunky to use.
R2modman is fine, but because it exists on the grace of what appears to be a third party (Overwolf), it could be shut down at any point. Which is mildly concerning.
The source of r2modman is available, and under a FOSS-compatible license (https://github.com/ebkr/r2modmanPlus), together with a relatively small but dedicated community. Ideally, the actual file sharing shouldn't be centralized (imho), but it sounds overly alarmist to say it can be shut down at any point.
I understand only allowing subscribers to download files, but going to extra distance to only allow people to use their main e-mail accounts is too far.
Personally, I am also not frequently in the mood to solve shitty captchas, especially not from big brother Shoogle.
Well, it would have been nice to play some mods, but this price is too high to pay for me, so I guess then I just have to treat it as not available on the Internet.