Does anyone get paid anything? Or potentially just the game makers capitalising on the success of the mod?
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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bethesda taught us a very important lesson a while ago - if your game isn't good, then the modders won't bother. Skyrim despite its flaws is a good game, and has mods to show for it, Starfield despite its budget is pretty bad, and after the initial hype most ambitious mod projects were cancelled.
because of that i don't think there's any neferious plot behind the game makers celebrating their modding community, and the modding community certainly isn't getting forced to work without pay - they're passionate about the game and want to make something of their own within it, and honestly that builds a good portfolio for future use too
People get mad when payment is expected for labor
Defending amateurism in amateur fields is reasonable. Especially when amateurism is a legal defense of the practice such as modding. Professional mods without official license are copyright violations.
This is similar to fanfic communities. The amateurism of the field gives it part of its charm and community, and it also makes it easier for people to come in, develop these skills, and move into creating and selling original works if they'd like to move in that direction.
I don't get ballooning mod teams. I mean, at that point why not ship a standalone game? Last time this happened it was called The Witcher and I hear that did alright.
Last time a ballooning mod team released a mod was Fallout: London and that also did alright...
Modding something that already exists is way easier than making a game, and when it comes to huge mod teams most people contribute in small ways in their free time. People also come and go to the modding scene whenever they feel like it as opposed to actually requiring to work in a timely manner.
Yeah, well, that's why game engines are a thing. I didn't pick The Witcher at random, that was built on top of Neverwinter Nights tech.
Maybe I'm too stuck in the 90s, but I never quite got the point of doing all those total conversions for Quake games when you could just as well use the exact same tools by licensing the engine and just ship the thing as a game.
Well, no, I'm lying. The point of those total conversions was very often that people wanted to use a bunch of licensed characters they didn't own, which I guess is the point here as well, so maybe I've answered my own question.
As far as I know you also can't just buy the Larian engine. It's proprietary.
Pre-existing models/art is something that is a huge work effort. Not to be undervalued. If one can get those for free, it can be the reason some game exists.
Take Auto Chess for example. I can imagine programming that DOTA 2 mod was an effort one or few programmers did as a hobby at first. If they would have had to either pay or network with artists to create the art and other people to do marketing, it would have been a lot more than a hobby.
"One or few programmers" is the key part of that, though. I'm not saying every modder should get into game development out of the gate. Modding is a great way to dip your toes into gamedev without having to do all the teambuilding and groundwork of putting together every piece of a game.
But some mods get so big they do have a full-on dev team. Nothing wrong with spending some time getting proof of concept that the team can do the job, but if you're spending years with a full team completely overhauling a game... I mean, get paid, man. You're doing a whole ass job at that point.
They do eventually that's how we got most of our legendary studios and genres, but modding is low risk and cuts a lot faff. It also gives you a massive boost in publicity without spending on marketing.
Sure.
Again, people seem to be reading this as saying "don't mod, develop full games". Not what it says. I'm saying "if your mod is bloating so much you have a full team of developers working at speed it may be worth considering making a standalone game instead".
In some cases you only get there a long while into working on a mod and it's worth releasing that, getting some visibility and then moving on to standalone stuff instead, but mods that could have been a full-on release are relatively frequent, and I don't like it when artists get paid in exposure by speculatively making games for someone else.
Yeah I agree sorry if it came across as comtrarian I just live the idea that game dev is going back to the 80s90s with non published games outpacing AAA. Be great to see a proper studio come out of this. Hopefully there's some dedicated full timers in those numbers.
why not ship a standalone game?
Hasbro owns the ip and it's way cheaper to use someone else's license and make changes than to get your own license.
A friend of mine had a similar thought. He was sitting down to do some work on an open source game, and then was like "Wait. What am I doing?" and he made his own game from scratch. ( This one: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1271280/Rift_Wizard/ - It's good, but kind of too hard for my brain )
It helped that he a had a lot of xp in game development. I imagine some of the boring, difficult, stuff doesn't have as many people readily available. There's a lot of "Why does the game crash if I push the up arrow key when I'm in my inventory, sometimes?" stuff you have to worry about when you're doing the whole thing.
Rift Wizard!
Part of me is so pulled by games with customizable characters and good magic systems, but roguelike… oof. But it calls to my childhood self. Maybe I'll watch a playthrough to try to see if it's for me.
Props to your friend for making and finishing a game at all, let alone the reviews said one lots of people enjoy!
I've never heard that this started as a mod. Last I knew, even Witcher 1 was a licensed product even at the initial development. It's been a couple years since I watched the CDProjekt documentary though.
It didn't, technically, but it WAS originally build on the Neverwinter Nights toolset/engine. A licenced version, then modified. Which is sort of my point. Why mod if you have a big group of devs and you're working at speed? Just pay to license the toolset you're using and ship a game.
Because Larian wouldn't let them do that. It's extremely rare for companies to legitimize and officially adopt a fanmade mod as a real product. Larian isn't licensing the BG3 engine as a game toolkit so there's no legal avenue for fans to do this.
They would need to make it a new IP with different tech and new assets, which is much much harder than what they're doing now.
Well, I don't know that Larian is the problem. They don't own the D&D or the BG license and they´re moving on from both, apparently. That said, I don't know how willing they are to license their engine. I'm guessing not particularly, since they haven't done it so far, to my knowledge.
Yeah, definitely not Larian, they've always been pretty open to players and other devs alike. And if they really do end up moving on, I cannot wait to see what they do next. Maybe a new Divinity game that's as in-depth as BG3?
Ooooohhhh fuck yeah
I'm stoked for this mod.
What a treat, and what a win for self-hosting. I wish they talked more about how they did it in the article.
As an avid fan of BG2 this does tickle my fancy.
Man, BG3 is so much downloaded at 15th April. Steam servers, better be ready for my 130GB download.