Some of their points are technically correct, e.g. that mods can increase the support workload if they don’t work properly.
Then again, even rudimentary mod support can mitigate that simply by displaying the fact that the game is modded in an appropriate place (like the start menu, log files, or the launcher if present). Then support can ask for that first and tell people to disable or uninstall their mods and call again. Boom, support workload reduced.
This is less possible with competitive multiplayer games but even there you might get away with something like a Stellaris-style checksum system. Simply declaring mods to be bad is just lazy.
Plenty of people do. Especially since broken mods can cause problems like unexpected crashes that might not be easy to trace back to the mod. If the game automatically sends in crash reports, a popular mod becoming unstable might generate significant work for a while.
A mod-aware game wil usuallyl point out right in the crash log that it’s modded and might even enumerate the mods. Makes it real easy to find out that “Jake’s Improved Graphics for 2.3 Continued” is the shared culprit.
For debugging. No amount of internal testing can match a few thousand players in the wild. Usually these crash handlers ask you if they can upload the logs but I’ve also seen a few games where you can toggle it in the options.
Ok if mods are cheating, that’s fine. Who cares if people cheat on their own experience of a game they bought? Oh no, someone is “cheating” at Megaman 🙄. Someone is cheating at Resident Evil. So what, Capcom? Why does it matter? Who are they impacting besides themselves?
Online issues? Different story, so just make sure those people can’t play online. Gotta tell ya, though, the overwhelming majority of mods don’t do that, and when they do, the devs have already put something in there to deter it. Most mods on multiplayer games are model swaps and reskins (really, it’s all just big titty mods)
Instead, Capcom, give us mod tools. Do what Bethesda does and give us a whole-ass creation kit, that way, your game can remain relevant for over a decade and make bank every couple years when you rerelease it. Skyrim isn’t beloved for the vanilla experience
No, it isn’t. Some poor journalism half a decade ago based on bad translations and hearsay led to some bad articles. You added the felony bit, tho so the story unravels more.
the kotaku article is the badly translated one yes, japan has copyright advisories saying tampering with game consoles and game console save files is against japanese copyright laws and bad translations sought that out to be about modding games, it’s not
game modification is a felony crime in japan and sk
One big problem is that almost everything can be called a mod. Modification and distribution of modified copyrighted content, if not permitted, can be a copyright violation, unless jurisdictions have some sort of Fair Use system (small tangent: with all the shit DMCA brought, Fair Use is actually awesome).
That said, embracing most kinds of mods should be in the self-interest of game publishers. They are basically free labor, be it by fixing bugs the publisher should fix (see Starfield) or just by extending the life span of a game in general and thereby increasing lifetime sales.
Modification and distribution of modified copyrighted content, if not permitted, can be a copyright violation
Generally you are not distributing any content from the game. Most mods to games are using API calls to a mod loader to change the game for the user on runtime. These distributed mods generally have no copyright content in them.
Most mods to games are using API calls to a mod loader to change the game for the user on runtime.
As I’ve literally written in my first sentence: “almost everything can be called a mod.”
There are many types of mods, not just using API calls to make the game behave differently. AI upscaled texture packs are derived from the originals, for example. Extracting assets from one game and putting them into another is also not uncommon. I don’t know which methods most mods use. I’m not aware of a quotable statistic.
Not saying there aren’t people who don’t like the vanilla experience, but it’s success would be nowhere near as huge if not for the modding community. Skyrim is the two biggest mod communities one Nexus, and the top 5 are all Bethesda games. In the top 8, 6 of them are Bethesda games. Skyrim has been on top since I’ve been using nexus, and I’ve been using it for a decade or more, and that’s to say nothing of the other sites out there. Clearly modding is a tremendous part of Skyrim’s appeal
But people also happily bought it on consoles with no/negligible mod support. How much do you think they sold on switch where it doesn't go on sale below $30? Because I'm betting they made plenty.
Bethesda games are the only ones I can think of that have mod support for consoles. It’s way less than PC for sure, but I wouldn’t call it negligible
Considering most console games require a whole lot of work-around, even when their PC versions are more easily modded, I’d say just the existence of console mod support on Bethesda’s part is a recognition of the importance modding has on those games
Again, I’m not saying that Skyrim would have been a failure without mods, only that it’s incredible success would not have been achieved without them
It's absolutely negligible. There isn't a mod available on their official mod platform that anyone involved in the PC mode scene from actual mod distribution sites is installing.
Mod support on consoles is borderline unprecedented. The fact that the devs made sure that consoles got that goes to show just how negligible it isn’t. Skyrim is practically the face of game modding. Without any other context, if you bring up game modding, you’re most likely going to be conjuring skyrim in people’s heads. Modding is absolutely not negligible to Skyrim financially or even to its identity
It's nothing but an excuse to pretend their distribution platform is legitimate.
There's nothing remotely interesting available on the official Bethesda mod platform. It didn't sell them any extra copies. It's complete and utter trash.
There's no connection and no commonality between that nonsense and the modding ecosystem that kept people playing on PC.
I haven’t been interested in playing vanilla Skyrim since 2011. I still fuck around with mods every year or so. The game is somehow incredibly simplistic while also super clunky and every character has one of four voices.
Mods are the only reason Skyrim stood the test of time so far because my position is very popular.
Ok if mods are cheating, that’s fine. Who cares if people cheat on their own experience of a game they bought? Oh no, someone is “cheating” at Megaman 🙄. Someone is cheating at Resident Evil. So what, Capcom? Why does it matter? Who are they impacting besides themselves?
Yeah, unless it’s multiplayer, a gamer should be permitted to cheat however they want. Adult gamers need to take care of stuff and don’t have time for such eccentricities. It’s not only big publishers like Capcom, though. The indie developer of Project Warlock likened quick saving to cheating and his artistic intend was not to allow that. Die in a map and start from the beginning. WTF. Those publishers/developers need to realize that gamers are paying customers and need to treat them this way.
And most mods aren’t actually cheating anyway. They are cosmetic changes, new equipment, gamepleay alterations, and sure, some are intended to make the games easier, but there are those that make them harder too
My brother in christ, OG Terraria was never this fucking tough to beat. People created new layers of difficulty for bosses, like how is that cheating. It took me about 100 hours to beat that game while duplicating resources, because it was so hard. Even next-class weapons and armor didn’t make late-game bosses easy. But oh boy how great was the feeling of defeating the SCal. That was many years ago, I don’t even know if they added another fuckton of content.
Who cares if people cheat on their own experience of a game they bought?
Yep, that’s me.
I have a family, a job that burns my brain out most days, and other hobbies. When I play games, I like to just turn off my brain and shoot bad guys with impunity. I don’t have time to actually Gut Gud^TM^, so I often cheat a bit and never play multiplayer.
It works for me and anyone bothered by that, including Capcom, should fuck off and worry about their own lives.
though seriously due to mods being third party content there is some real damage, but thats actually solved by better mod support and providing a trusted store(like steam) rather than cracking down on mod scene and forcing people to visit shady websites to get them. but the csuits are probably way too good at their jobs to get that
Maybe I’m misremembering because it was a while ago, but I remember a time in the early 00’s when it seemed like mod support was practically the norm. It’s when I switched to PC gaming, and WHY I switched to PC gaming. Games used to specifically have mod sections in their main menus. It was encouraged. RTS’ especially were great with that, coming out with map-makers and creation kits. Mod support keeps games alive, and I can’t believe how game devs haven’t looked at the financial success of Skyrim and not realized it’s because the player base gave everything bigger titties and skimpier outfits
You know I’ve put a couple hundred hours into Skyrim (which is a lot for me), but I’ve actually never modded. You’ve just convinced me I need skimpier outfits.
Oh I remember this YT channel that had weekly showcases for Skyrim mods.
Sure, skimpy and booby mods were plenty, but some added better textures, luminescence and shadows, sky details, just everything imaginable.
When Bethesda released the ‘upgraded’ Skyrim, they made a vid of selected mods that for free gave much better visual experience than IIRC $40 ‘re-release’.
And that’s just graphics. Add quests, items, NPCs, areas, everything else you might want.
Counter-Strike started as a mod for Half-Life. Team Fortress was originally a mod for Quake. DOTA was a custom map for Warcraft 3. Project Reality was a Battlefield 2 mod that has since morphed into Squad. Brutal Doom inspired Doom 2016/Eternal.
Modding clearly has powerful potential, if only developers will acknowledge it. They certainly used to! I spent a lot of time playing Tribes RPG, Sven-Coop, countless Doom WADs… it seems like when everything became a console port, publishers figured it wasnt worth the effort.
It lives on in indie games like Terraria, Factorio, 7 Days to Die, and the handful of AAA publishers smart enough to get out of people’s way. Seems like Capcom might be losing their grip on reality because Monster Hunter has really benefitted from modding.
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