Nexus Mods Talk Plans To Compensate Modders

One of the largest mod sites ripe with more than 13 million registered users is about ti implement a system to compensate modders.

Nexus Mods will introduce a donation-type system in 2018 that will reward those who creat useful and popular mods.

The system is fairly straight forward. The compensation will be paid out of a monthly pool initiated by Nexus Mods, at a value between $5,000 and $10,000, and supplemented by user-driven donations.

A points distribution based on the number of unique downloads will determine compensation output.

“The plan is to offer popular games from storefronts like Steam, Humble Bundle or GOG, subscriptions and software licenses for popular software that modders use for their modding or would like to use but can’t afford and even PC hardware, for example, video cards, motherboards, memory and so on and so forth,” Robin Scott, the owner of Nexus Mods said.

“I understand this is going to be contentious for some people, especially in regards to big mods that already have a multitude of unique downloads within the community,” he wrote. “But unfortunately there are restrictions with our stat tracking that will not enable us to, for example, count all downloads from the start of this scheme as having been reset and ‘unique’ from that point on.”

Scott went on to say that modders can accumulate their points month over month, and won’t lose them if the points are spent.

Scott also added that charitable giving options will be included if modders don’t wish to redeem their points for anything which includes giving points to other modders.

This FAQ on the Nexus Mods site explains a lot more in greater detail including how things will work with Bethesda Softworks, and, more specifically, their Creation Club.

“Bethesda have made it very clear over the years that if you force them to give you an answer on a particular issue it’s much easier for them to say ‘no’ than it is to say yes,” Scott stated.

“However, if you simply get on with it and don’t ask them, they don’t need to say ‘no’ or ‘yes’ and they’ll let you know if they have a very serious issue with it.”

“If [Bethesda is] adamant that [mod donations have] to be removed then I will remove it for any Bethesda games we host, as I’m sure you can appreciate getting into a legal fight over this wouldn’t be prudent,” Scott continued, pointing out that Bethesda could change its mind at any point for any reason.

The program will launch sometime in the first quarter of 2018.