Nexus Mods' new owners promise they won't monetise the site to death as users panic at the whiff of venture capital (www.pcgamer.com)
from inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 16:00
https://lemmy.world/post/31535745

#games

threaded - newest

MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social on 17 Jun 16:03 next collapse

Translation: “Once all the hub-bub dies down we intend to as slowly as you’ll allow, slip in monetization.”

cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca on 17 Jun 16:22 next collapse

Yup we’ve never seen this happen before, not ever. Not once!

/s

MyDarkestTimeline01@ani.social on 17 Jun 16:57 collapse

Exactly! No venture capitalist has ever taken something that could be monetized but wasn’t, bought it out, and then proceeded to monetize it into irrelevancy before…

einlander@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 16:58 collapse

Just the tip, you won’t even feel it.

SattaRIP@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 17 Jun 16:11 next collapse

Oh so they’ll do it subtly enough to think people won’t notice.

30p87@feddit.org on 17 Jun 16:16 next collapse

Fuck Nexus Mods. You already need an account to download anything.

Forester@pawb.social on 17 Jun 16:17 next collapse

A free account.

cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca on 17 Jun 16:21 collapse

It’s still an extra barrier. There’s zero point other than tracking what people do.

Forester@pawb.social on 17 Jun 16:27 next collapse

News flash running the servers isn’t free.

Yes they are tracking us. That’s how they pay to keep the servers running.

If your not paying you are the product.

malwieder@feddit.org on 17 Jun 18:55 next collapse

If you’re paying they’re also tracking you.

30p87@feddit.org on 17 Jun 20:37 collapse

But somehow eg. rdr2mods.com is free, and without account. Oh wonder.

Forester@pawb.social on 17 Jun 20:49 next collapse

Cool hope they do a decent job moderating the servers they run and limiting malware exposure. I also hope they’ve taken steps to prevent themselves being used as a host for malicious entities to distribute malware to third parties

psychadlligoat@piefed.social on 17 Jun 21:35 collapse

Mods for one game vs basically every game

I could probably host the entirety of the mods on that site on my homelab, Nexus is exponentially larger and more complex

30p87@feddit.org on 17 Jun 21:40 collapse

Mods for one game vs basically every game

As it should be. Or are we pretending that centralization is suddenly good now?

JigglySackles@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:12 collapse

It has always had its perks.

30p87@feddit.org on 17 Jun 22:16 collapse

You mean cash for shareholders/owners? And a hassle to move to the next platform once it destroys itself?

JigglySackles@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:48 collapse

Do you consider those perks? I certainly don’t.

wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 16:43 collapse

It also tracks what you’ve downloaded to provide update notifications and encourage you to participate in the mod quality ratings system.

It’s not 100% without reason beyond tracking users.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 17 Jun 17:11 collapse

And to limit scrapers.

tal@lemmy.today on 17 Jun 16:22 collapse

Well, unless someone makes an alternative, people are going to use it.

They do need to provide a lot of bandwidth, which isn’t free, though I wonder how viable it’d be for someone to create a Nexus-like Website using magnet URLs and BitTorrent as a backend.

Maybe too much of a technical bar to attract users.

Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 16:40 next collapse

There are JS based torrent downloaders. That would work for the normies to get files, but you’d still have to find a way to convince people to host files on the backend. It’d probably take a full-on desktop client wrapper with an embedded torrent client but that’s a pretty hard sell for the average nerd if you’re upfront, and probably a harder sell if you’re dishonest about it.

Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 18:10 collapse

Wouldn’t the average nerd only need a good ol’ regular torrent client?
The slightly-more-than-average nerd could be incentivized through a specialized client that also acts as a mod manager (iirc Nexus Mods does this, minus the torrent protocol), and the bigger nerd would write themselves a Linux client without using glib nor GTK while evading bioluminescent three-letter org agents of specific ethnicity and sexual orientation.

wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 16:42 collapse

The issue with using torrents is longevity. You’d still want/need traditional storage backing it all. Don’t want some mod to become lost media because nobody is actively seeding it.

cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca on 17 Jun 16:21 next collapse

Obviously they will. Years down the road. 🤗

Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 16:27 next collapse

Narrator: they monetised the site to death.

Lembot_0003@lemmy.zip on 17 Jun 17:16 collapse

… and beyond!

caut_R@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 16:38 next collapse

„Trust me, bro, we won‘t enshitify, please don‘t leave and make something new elsewhere that’s out of our control.“

LostWanderer@lemmynsfw.com on 17 Jun 16:43 next collapse

Ah, so basically Nexus Mods is dead to me now. Whenever venture capital is injected to anything, it’s a bad sign. Ugh, great these particular Capitalists are from the crypto community…

They’ve been souring a lot of potentially cool projects with blockchain/web3 nonsense, like Playtron, for example. Lutris is now dead in the water and hasn’t been updated for months now; the former dev is working on Playtron. There is a huge issue log that doesn’t seem to be addressed at the moment.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 17 Jun 17:12 collapse

Read the article. They are.

LostWanderer@lemmynsfw.com on 17 Jun 17:17 collapse

I did, and my worries were confirmed! I haven’t updated my comment.

[deleted] on 17 Jun 19:43 collapse

.

the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 17:18 next collapse

I have a bridge to sell anyone who believes that.

Thassodar@lemm.ee on 17 Jun 17:42 next collapse

When is Nexus Mods 2: Electric Boogaloo?

Lemminary@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:27 collapse

You’re in luck, it’s already in the works.

narr1@lemmy.ml on 17 Jun 17:48 next collapse

sure buddy, unfortunately they done that already. I especially love the 3 mbps cap on downloads with free accounts.

chameleon@fedia.io on 17 Jun 16:32 next collapse

The new owners are so trustworthy that they weren't even transparent about who they are. In the comments of the original announcement they defend that with:

This post wasn’t about Chosen — it was about Robin and the legacy he built over 24 years. We’re the new owners and ultimate decision-makers at Nexus Mods. We’ll share more about ourselves when we’ve earned that right. For now, we’re focused on listening, learning, and making modding even easier, and yes, you’ll see us around in the community being active.

I can't say I find that statement to be particularly trustworthy given it's coming from an NFT bro.

Lemminary@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:25 collapse

Yeah, you don’t start out as a folk hero by hiding behind a black screen and waiting for the right moment to pounce. Sorry NFT dude.

iamjackflack@lemm.ee on 17 Jun 18:20 next collapse

Hahaha yea right… give it 6-12 months and that will change

daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 18:56 next collapse

Mod hosting seems to be a great usecase for torrent. It only need a suitable frontend and we are golden.

YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today on 17 Jun 19:20 next collapse

Hit me up with an addy when you’re on it!

WhyIHateTheInternet@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:35 collapse

Ooh I’ll take some addy too. Been too long and I need to clean my fuckin house.

mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works on 17 Jun 21:54 next collapse

Would a federated discovery frontend work? Peertube’s back end of the service would probably work great as a starting point since it uses torrents to ease up on traffic for individual servers

d00ery@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:10 next collapse

Seems like a good idea. I wonder if there’s anything already similar. It’d be a real treat to see a VC company get shafted.

punkibas@lemmy.zip on 17 Jun 23:17 collapse

Someone mentioned this in another thread and I found it interesting:

Ckan kerbal space program mods

Apparently its a frontend for mods that’s hosted on github

msage@programming.dev on 18 Jun 14:41 collapse

Github, that’s limiting API calls, hmm…

Pika@sh.itjust.works on 17 Jun 19:13 next collapse

Nexus Mods is far too late on the monetization aspect. The restrictions placed on mod downloading sucks, and it hard pushes buying a membership. Not to mention they basically gave up on vortex and its a buggy mess even if you run it native.

GunValkyrie@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 19:18 collapse

They gave up on vortex to make the nexus mods app. Which is pretty impressive so far. I would recommend reading the articles from the makers of it that discuss how they are making it and why. It’s really interesting.

I have been using the nexus mods app for cyberpunk and it’s really slick and easy.

Pika@sh.itjust.works on 17 Jun 19:23 collapse

I wasn’t aware there was a replacement that was suitable. I will have to look into that soley on the fact there seems to be a linux native release, thank you.

GunValkyrie@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 19:44 collapse

Yeah I have my worries in the sale of nexusmods.com. But everything i have read about the new app is really promising and the people working on it have worked on other major mod managers in the past as well. So they seem to know what they are doing. It’s still in really early alpha so if you use it, make backups. Sometimes you have to completely uninstall and then reinstall to update which is annoying. But thats the cost of using alpha software.

SolidShake@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 19:29 next collapse

See all these free mods!? They’re just for you to use however you want to!! Pretty awesome right. Just enjoy this .5mbs download. Oh you want faster download speeds? Well… Sir. That will be $12 a month. Evil laugh

altima_neo@lemmy.zip on 17 Jun 20:29 collapse

Don’t they already do that?

SolidShake@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 21:14 next collapse

That’s the joke

mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works on 17 Jun 21:56 collapse

Tbh, unless you’re downloading a DLC size mod or a big 4K textures pack the installs are nearly instant at the moment

Exusia@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 19:40 next collapse

Currently downloading everything to MO2 and setting to not check for updates huehuehue

People gonna see torrents for a “preset packages” of Skyrim mods

LiveLM@lemmy.zip on 17 Jun 22:56 collapse

As an outsider to Bethesda modding, given how difficult it looks, I’m surprised to hear this isn’t already a thing.

Gonzako@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:55 next collapse

well wabbajack works with nexus (You just buy one month for autodownloads) but I guess that’ll have to change

Exusia@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:11 next collapse

I found a couple recommendation lists to “make the game look good” because I dont need all the fancy extras like body mods and weapons and grouped them together in load order, because I knew at some stage I could just package them nicely into a ZIP if I need to uninstall Skyrim for some reason. Glad to see I was ahead of the game

tal@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 02:35 next collapse

It really depends on how one is applyng mods. Bethesda does have their own mod site and in-game support for modding, and that’s pretty straightforward (and the only option on consoles). That will limit what mods are available.

I do kind of wish that there were one cross-platform open-source universal “game mod” program that could support multiple online services. Would like to have Wabbajack-like functionality (apply a whole set of curated, tested-together mods) as a base too, as that’d lower the bar.

ms_lane@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 14:25 collapse

Modding community will never allow it, when Nexus allowed people to keep downloading old mods a bunch of authors decried it since they wanted the ability to remove a mod from the internet forever. It was ‘theirs’ (even though it’s just modified Bethesda data)

DaedalousIlios@pawb.social on 17 Jun 21:00 next collapse

Jesus fucking Christ, they didn’t sell out to a fucking company! He transferred ownership to two long-time users of the site! There wasn’t even a deal struck, he just said “you’re the owners now!”

lime@feddit.nu on 17 Jun 21:35 collapse

how do we know no money was involved? both the new owners apparently work at the same company, which was recently created and is a subsidiary of a vc firm.

DaedalousIlios@pawb.social on 18 Jun 03:04 collapse

How do we know there was? How, exactly is one to prove that a transaction didn’t take place? Sure, he, the former owner, could say there wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean any more or less than what he already has, which is that he believes the new owners share his vision for the site! And at least he picked two people who, to my understanding, have been around Nexus for awhile!

I’m not saying it’s impossible that Nexus enshittifies, and I understand that it’s been a trend lately, but this, as of this moment right now, feels like senseless panic that ought to be saved for when they actually do something wrong! I’ll join the hate wagon when they start brutally monatizing the site or taking IPOs.

pory@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 16:46 collapse

Do you know how easy it would be, if money was not transferred, for the new and old owners to both outright say so? Yes they could also lie but that’s irrelevant. if this wasn’t a capital driven transaction, they’d assuage many fears by telling us it wasn’t. They haven’t done that.

sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 21:54 next collapse

Reminder that ModDB still exists, and works.

EDIT:

Seeing as this is fairly decently upvoted now:

www.moddb.com

and also, I found this

github.com/loicreynier/awesome-modding

absolutely gigantic compendium of tons of mods, websites that have tons of mods for various games that are not nexusmods.

Elevator7009@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 12:50 collapse

link for lazy folks like myself www.moddb.com

sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 16:47 collapse

Sorry, I probably should have included that.

I’ve been modding games and making mods for games since before Nexus or SteamWorkshop or anything even existed… I guess people just genuinely have never even heard of moddb these days, like how gamefaqs is an ‘ancient relic’ or w/e.

[deleted] on 18 Jun 21:08 next collapse

.

goldenquetzal@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 14:04 next collapse

I had never heard of it! Thanks for sharing

sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Jun 14:35 collapse

I also just found this:

github.com/loicreynier/awesome-modding

basically just a huge compendium of everywhere all kinds of mods for anything are hosted, that’ll give you an idea of how the game modding scene is actually rather dispersed, not only monopolized by nexusmods.

not sure if its in this huge list but:

fpsbanana

is another one i am quite familiar with, been going strong with mostly source mods… possibly since the late 90s, at the least the early 2000’s.

Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.works on 19 Jun 14:30 next collapse

you belong in a museum!

Wait, that site isn’t that old right? I used to use it for the battle of middle-earth mods.

Maybe I belong in a museum…

biofaust@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 14:45 collapse

Up until now I thought moddb was all that existed.

JigglySackles@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:06 next collapse

Maaaaaan. Fuck. I really like Nexus Mods. Get ready for another enshittifying ride to the bottom.

flop_leash_973@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 22:56 next collapse

Won’t monetize it “to death”, just right up to the line of death.

UnrefinedChihuahua@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 00:09 next collapse

Define "death."

  • Some lawyer, probably.
Atropos@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:30 next collapse

'E’s only mostly dead.

drasglaf@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 05:58 collapse

It’ll always be at 1HP from now on.

ICastFist@programming.dev on 17 Jun 23:44 next collapse

I miss FilePlanet. That’s where I got my first Morrowind mods many years ago

At least GameBanana still exists, though there aren’t as many uploads there as Nexus. Still good that there’s an alternative

lechekaflan@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:55 next collapse

Fileplanet content is back but not how it looks right now.

CalipherJones@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 05:33 collapse

Does anybody remember Cheat Planet or is that just me

lechekaflan@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:58 next collapse

File a lawsuit. Paying customers are supposed to do that if they were given an explanation but in bad-faith language.

TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com on 18 Jun 00:06 next collapse

No they will sell it to someone that will though

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 00:56 next collapse

Time to cancel the paid subscription for fast download i guess.

drmoose@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 01:13 next collapse

As a software engineer i always found nexus simply archaic. Hot take but the molding industry might be better off with a new mod index.

hazl@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 07:58 next collapse

Here’s how it goes with half the games I mod these days.

  1. Game not manageable in Vortex out of the box
  2. Find the extension that makes the game manageable
  3. All popular mods are based on one single mod that acts as a framework or SDK for those other mods
  4. That prerequisite mod isn’t well maintained on Nexus, and the author recommends using $otherModManager to manage this game
drmoose@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 08:11 next collapse

Funny how all of that is straight up solved with any package manager or even git itself (with submodules) for free and yet gaming community is protecting some proprietary burning heap of garbage.

pory@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 16:43 collapse

The main problem in your setup is you installed Vortex. It and its prior incarnation Nexus Mod Manager have always been a thorn in actual mod developers’ sides. Mod devs can easily tell you where to extract the zip to, and what dependencies you need. Any load order manager type thing will always be better when designed specifically for the game you’re running. Having an “easy one click GUI!!!” doesn’t actually help anybody because modding different games isn’t a universally systematic process.

Blaiz0r@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 09:01 collapse

It should all be open source.

First thing is mods should just exist on free hosting providers for source code like GitHub/Lab etc.

Then an optional mod manager software that can import mods from these sources.

Non of this really needs a centralised community, these places already exist thanks to other better suited services like social media

Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf on 18 Jun 17:09 collapse

But social media is 95% turbocancer…

Blaiz0r@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 17:47 collapse

I mean things like Discord and Revolt, even Reddit is better for communities to discuss things about mods than the Nexus site

Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf on 19 Jun 17:00 collapse

I didn’t down vote you, but Discord is a huge offender regarding enshittification of the internet. Reddit might even be worse.

clif@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 01:25 next collapse

Promise in one hand, shit in the other, let me know which one fills up first.

Buffalobuffalo@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 21:48 collapse

Let me just use this promise hand to send you a pic.

Gronk@aussie.zone on 18 Jun 05:17 next collapse

Probably a good time to start up a rival mod site that every one will flock too after these guys backpedal on their word.

Something synonymous with Nexus… CapitalMods anyone?

ijedi1234@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 08:48 collapse

I miss Filefront.

Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 06:50 next collapse

We all know how these things go, so I understand everybody’s fears but please wait to react until they make actual moves toward crossing the line. I remain optimistic about the site’s future, and the recent ways they handled user feedback as it has been changing in the last few years is evidence I should be

forgotaboutlaye@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 07:11 next collapse

I won’t stop using them because I (seemingly now foolishly) bought the lifetime membership, but I’ll be continuing to look for alternatives.

fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com on 18 Jun 15:46 collapse

I’m not going to continue to invest my time into an inevitable wreck.

umbraroze@slrpnk.net on 18 Jun 08:42 next collapse

Ok, so what is the current alternative nice option for SkyrimSE mods?

Preferably one with a mod manager/download client. Vortex is kind of janky but it did the job. I’d prefer not to manage any of this stuff manually, like cavemen. it’s been decades you shouldn’t need to do that

Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 08:56 collapse

Preferably one with a mod manager/download client. Vortex is kind of janky but it did the job. I’d prefer not to manage any of this stuff manually, like cavemen. it’s been decades you shouldn’t need to do that

MO2 can do anything Vortex can, and in fact, Stalker and Stalker 2 modders prefer it. The files just need to be hosted elsewhere. A lot of modmakers advise against using Vortex to begin with.

umbraroze@slrpnk.net on 18 Jun 10:11 collapse

Oh, thank you! MO2 seems a lot more clean and simple than Vortex.

…and in related news, now that I’m redownloading everything for funsies anyway, I have graduated from trying to keep my mod lists on a website to scribbling a list down in Joplin. With links and everything. In case these mods I’m using decide to move from Nexus or something.

aaron@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 09:02 next collapse

Well they’ve promised so that’s that. No story here.

xavier666@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 10:24 collapse

pinky-promise

MacNCheezus@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 09:11 next collapse

So, just half to death then?

slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org on 18 Jun 10:33 collapse

Just crippling pain.

NutWrench@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 13:09 next collapse

I think the new owners will fark NexusMods to death and you should start looking for a backup site to host your mods.

ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 13:55 next collapse

Pinky promise?

Buske@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 14:02 next collapse

Nexus is dead, Start making a new one.

lechekaflan@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 01:26 collapse

Easy to say, yet so far most of the other modding sites seem to be content sitting on their butts right now.

Building an alternative would take time. And some money.

LucidNightmare@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 14:06 next collapse

This is tragic. I have been on NexusMods since the 2000s. I learned how to mod games because of that site. I will be pouring one out for this landmark of a website after work today. Paid for Lifetime and everything, because the website made it easy to find, install, and update mods for any given game that supported mods. Damn, man. Damn.

Big_Boss_77@lemmynsfw.com on 19 Jun 04:40 collapse

Same… this is the swiftest of kicks to the nads…

phoenixz@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 14:33 next collapse

venture capital

Aaaand it’s gone.

Deflated0ne@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 15:55 next collapse

They’re definitely gonna monetize it to death.

sparr@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 17:00 next collapse

Maybe this is what it will finally take to get some of the bigger game communities off Nexus. It’s a decade overdue.

Bosht@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 17:02 next collapse

If there was one god damned example of any company saying this and sticking to it I might believe them. But I have yet to be proven wrong. Sucks too as they were my go to for mods.

atticus88th@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 18:01 collapse

All the examples I could think of have been recent acquisitions… which means they just haven’t soured… yet. Sadly its inevitable.

_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 17:26 next collapse

I wish I could say this surprised me, but I’ve kind of been expecting this for awhile. They’ve been slowly getting worse for years, it went from just a hobby project to a corporation.

MufinMcFlufin@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 17:37 next collapse

Make it a legally binding contract, otherwise don’t bother promising.

MetalMachine@feddit.nl on 18 Jun 17:46 next collapse

Thats what they all say when they get acquired. “Won’t change our creative direction” type bs.

Bieren@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 21:46 next collapse

I’ll give it 8 months before it’s dead

Toga65@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 13:59 next collapse

Talk about putting part of your life’s work completely out to pasture.

I give it a year. What a shame.

goldenquetzal@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 14:06 collapse

No kidding. And his post saying it was in good hands knowing full well it’s venture capitalists. Fuck him.

GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 17:26 collapse

As if it wasn’t already.