Long time modder here, so I’ve been keeping up with this very closely. The owner (Dark0ne) really just handed control over to the people that were already running everything with him. The company (Black Tree Gaming Ltd.) is still exactly the same, they just have a new owner/parent company now (Chosen Something). And I’m sure he negotiated ahead of time that they’re limited in how much they can interfere, because I’ve seen nothing on my side indicating they plan to. (There’s no option for me to monetize my mods outside of donations or Patreon, for example.)
I’m trying to talk myself out of this perspective I have here. If you can help me with that, please do.
How about how it asks me to pay every time I download a mod, and makes me download each one in a collection even though they have a one-button feature? Same results, same total download size, but they turn it into a demeaning menial task. The only reason I can imagine for it is that they want non-paying customers to get bored and quit, cutting down on total downloads.
I can’t really tell what value they’re adding, since it’s the modders and the collection indexers who do all the actual work to make the mods and make sure they work with each other. So they’re a hosting service. And they provide… discoverability? But I’ve never discovered anything through NexusMods, I only used it after finding out that NexusMods was the only place I could easily get the mod collection I already knew I wanted. But it turned out it wasn’t easy, and that that was a deliberate design decision to try to squeeze me for cash to make their manufactured inconveniences disappear. And that is something that I oppose on a moral level.
“But they provide the app that places the resources and they swap the executable out so it still launches through Steam!” No, SMAPI does that. It’s the thing that places and runs SMAPI, I guess.
They do platforming (with community support for forums and comments), storage, and CDN all in one - for free (to mod developers). They have to monetize somehow, and it’s best they charge now than offer a free service only to pull the rug under people once they’re on the platform. Nothing is stopping you from putting your mods on, say, GitHub. Hell, if you’re putting together a modlist you can use wabbajack and it automatically downloads stuff from GitHub.
Yeah, that’s for their ad-free Premium thing, which gets rid of ads and lets you skip the nag screen you’re talking about. Which, fun fact, you can use uBlock Origin and a Greasemonkey script to skip (I’d recommend ViolentMonkey to run the script) ;)
Which reminds me, the top mods every game/month are eligible for a small cut of that money if you opt-in and give them your real personal info. I’ve only ever made the cut once so I completely forgot about it.
Well, enshittification usually only starts after a good while. If the parent company wants changes they can slowly press forward to achieve what they want, even if they are somewhat limited - those limitations are usually limited itself. E.g. WhatsApp data was seperate to Facebook at first, but slowly but surely they became more interlinked (at least internally).
Anyway, I don’t know enough about Nexus Mods and their owners to have any idea where they’re headed. As you’ve said, there’s been no indication of them doing something shitty.
Long time modder here, so I’ve been keeping up with this very closely. The owner (Dark0ne) really just handed control over to the people that were already running everything with him. The company (Black Tree Gaming Ltd.) is still exactly the same, they just have a new owner/parent company now (Chosen Something). And I’m sure he negotiated ahead of time that they’re limited in how much they can interfere, because I’ve seen nothing on my side indicating they plan to. (There’s no option for me to monetize my mods outside of donations or Patreon, for example.)
I’m trying to talk myself out of this perspective I have here. If you can help me with that, please do.
How about how it asks me to pay every time I download a mod, and makes me download each one in a collection even though they have a one-button feature? Same results, same total download size, but they turn it into a demeaning menial task. The only reason I can imagine for it is that they want non-paying customers to get bored and quit, cutting down on total downloads.
I can’t really tell what value they’re adding, since it’s the modders and the collection indexers who do all the actual work to make the mods and make sure they work with each other. So they’re a hosting service. And they provide… discoverability? But I’ve never discovered anything through NexusMods, I only used it after finding out that NexusMods was the only place I could easily get the mod collection I already knew I wanted. But it turned out it wasn’t easy, and that that was a deliberate design decision to try to squeeze me for cash to make their manufactured inconveniences disappear. And that is something that I oppose on a moral level.
“But they provide the app that places the resources and they swap the executable out so it still launches through Steam!” No, SMAPI does that. It’s the thing that places and runs SMAPI, I guess.
They do platforming (with community support for forums and comments), storage, and CDN all in one - for free (to mod developers). They have to monetize somehow, and it’s best they charge now than offer a free service only to pull the rug under people once they’re on the platform. Nothing is stopping you from putting your mods on, say, GitHub. Hell, if you’re putting together a modlist you can use wabbajack and it automatically downloads stuff from GitHub.
anybody remember gamespy?
Yeah, that’s for their ad-free Premium thing, which gets rid of ads and lets you skip the nag screen you’re talking about. Which, fun fact, you can use uBlock Origin and a Greasemonkey script to skip (I’d recommend ViolentMonkey to run the script) ;)
Which reminds me, the top mods every game/month are eligible for a small cut of that money if you opt-in and give them your real personal info. I’ve only ever made the cut once so I completely forgot about it.
You don’t have to give them any personal info though? You just earn the dp on your profile and you can exchange it for games or cash on PayPal.
Oh really? That’s good to know.
I wonder how they justify that on taxes lol…
“Yeah, we paid out $500 to 1337snipergodx6969@gmail.com. You’ll need to verify the other details with PayPal.”
Sorry I wouldn’t know, I’ve never cashed in through PayPal, just bought steam games with it.
Yeah, I gave mine (a whole $7) to Make-A-Wish. Don’t even use PayPal so…
Well, enshittification usually only starts after a good while. If the parent company wants changes they can slowly press forward to achieve what they want, even if they are somewhat limited - those limitations are usually limited itself. E.g. WhatsApp data was seperate to Facebook at first, but slowly but surely they became more interlinked (at least internally).
Anyway, I don’t know enough about Nexus Mods and their owners to have any idea where they’re headed. As you’ve said, there’s been no indication of them doing something shitty.