Paid mods are always debatable. Just take a look at Bethesda’s new effort to create a device designed to facilitate this sort of thing, having proven compelling and just as polarizing as its predecessors, although things have died down slightly since the Starfield Trackers Alliance project. controversy again in June.
So by releasing their policy update on paid mods that popular modding website Nexus Mods announced the day before, their team was never going to delight everyone. The good news is that, as some modders and players made important comments about the positive aspects of the practical rules he defined to accompany his stance, the Nexus team certainly hasn’t buried its head in the sand.
“Over the past year, several game developers have introduced various paid modding schemes, including Bethesda’s Verified Creators (Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starfield) and InZoi’s Creations Marketplace,” Nexus Mods family supervisor Pickysaurus wrote on a publication. “Thanks to this, we have won a number of demands for clarity on our paid modding stance and our paid modding regulations from many of our users. We are currently updating our policies to reflect our legitimate stance.
The new insurance policies defined have been the following:
- “Link to paid mods: If the uploader has free content on Nexus Mods and would like to link to the place to purchase their paid content, we will allow this subject to advertising limitations.”
- “Lite/Trial/Preview/Demo versions of paid mods: We will not allow free mods that represent an inferior version of the mod with no features to be shared to promote the purchase of the full version.”
- “Patches for/dependencies on paid mods: We will not allow any patches or add-ons for user-generated content that require payment to unlock (this specifically excludes DLC offered by the developer, including DLC that bundles items previously sold individually, such as the update Skyrim Anniversary). Likewise, if a mod uploaded to the site requires a paid mod to work, it will not be allowed.
- “Collections requiring paid mods: Like mods, if any collection does not work without the user purchasing paid mods, they will not be allowed.”
- “Backlinks required: If a mod author wants to link their free content on Nexus Mods to their paid content, the paid content must include a link to their Nexus Mods profile.”
“We firmly believe that modding should first and foremost be a pursuit of passion, with financial compensation being a nice bonus, but not the main driver of content creation,” Pickysaurus explained. “Our mission is ‘Make modding easy’ and we firmly believe that paid modding is in direct conflict with that goal. Game modding is already a complicated process and forces users to navigate a confusing division of free mods and you pay to make your setup work. does not represent an easy, accessible and positive modding community.”
They went on to stipulate that the issue is not black and white, saying that the website believes that long-established modders who have chosen to monetize through Bethesda’s Verified Creators program “should be able to recognize their paid work as long as it is not in detriment of the ecosystem and the free modding community.
The coverage was met with a fairly mixed reception, and the general rule referring to paid mod patches or dependencies was specifically criticized by some major modders and family members.
This prompted Pickysaurus to attempt to provide some clarification, writing in an update post that the site had spoken to Bethesda to confirm the difference between the initial club and verified author content. “We consider Creation Club content to be ‘official content’ in accordance with Bethesda’s stance and will therefore treat it as DLC,” they wrote. “This also extends to any creation published by the official Bethesda Game Studios account on its website. Any other verified creator content is considered unofficial and therefore this policy applies to it.”
When contacted via VG247 to comment on the coverage and its reception, Pickysaurus pointed us to an untouched post from those days, in which they wrote: “We spent the morning catching up on all the comments overnight and have had a meeting internal to discuss them. There will be another update on this later today or tomorrow.”
Where do you worry when paying for modifications? Tell us below.
