The Risks of Modding - Community

Mod-ern expectations

Over time, the way mods exist alongside games has shifted dramatically. Many players now view mods as an essential part of the game experience. If the mod they want to use isn’t working or is causing issues, it’s akin to a fault in a product they paid for. They haven’t necessarily paid the modder, but they very likely paid for the game itself. Many games now directly advertise mod support as a feature of the game; mods are no longer unauthorized modifications. Mods are now functionally commercialised, without necessarily being monetised. Our work we provide often for free is a part of the marketing campaigns of publishers.

With blurred lines between official game support and community-driven content, players often have unrealistic expectations of mods and their developers. When a mod stops working because of a new update to the game, or they just run into a general issue, you are now an obstacle preventing their product from working. Due to this, it’s not at all uncommon anymore for users to direct extremely levels of frustration at the modder.

In general, many users now have expectations for mods that rival the game itself. Modders are no longer community members who are just making content for the game, we’re a commodity that is sold to players. This can lead to significant entitlement from users, who expect everything done immediately and to their standards.

Community band wagoning

While communities can amplify positive sentiment, they are also just as capable of amplifying negative sentiment. Band wagoning is a very common occurrence on the internet. Where users take part in a campaign, often a negative one, mostly because they see others doing it. This makes it possible for coordinated campaigns to arise that escalate beyond the original issue, or retaliate in a completely disproportionate way.

When users want something, they can be very vocal. It might be that a new game update is out and requires an update to the mod, or a change was made to the mod that was controversial. Either way, it’s common to get a lot of messages, relative to the size of the community. Some of these messages might contain minor threats, desperation, or general anger. When someone new comes along prone to band wagoning and escalation, they might feel the need to do more than what others have done in order to be heard. That user then might escalate the threats or try to start some form of organised harassment campaign. Have this escalation happen enough times, and it can start getting dangerous.

As Kukielle, a former Skyrim modder, has mentioned in a post of hers; “It takes and takes and takes and almost never gives.” She was driven to quit modding due to this and similar forms of continued harassment. Harassment like this is pervasive and heavily amplified for marginalised peoples. For example, women have to deal with this harassment, and misogyny on top of it. The many experiences like this highlight how important it is to have support systems and mitigations in place.

I’ve also not gone unscathed. Not to go into specific details, but these are some of the more tangible outcomes I’ve faced to paint a picture of what modders can face. They have been the loss of a PayPal account, and separately a few years later the loss of all Meta accounts, both due to mass-reporting by angry users. Even outside of modding, I’m no stranger to band wagoning like this. I received a similar level of band wagoning abuse after a false positive VAC ban over a decade ago. This does show that isn’t a unique experience to modding, but modding definitely opens you up to it further.

How to mitigate

The unfortunate part about this issue, is that for the most part it cannot be prevented. This is to an extent something that comes with having a community around your mod. There are some ways to reduce the risk of it occurring though, some of which are similar to the suggestions from my last article. Creating a space where you can control and moderate the community is important. I for example run a Discord for this, which is the only official community and can be directly moderated. I heavily lock down other social media profiles, and don’t allow DMs.

In my experience, due to the expectation that we are reachable as mentioned in the previous article in the series, having a controlled community space ends up helping more than not. When people don’t have access to a space like that, they try finding alternative methods of contacting you, which can quickly lead to doxxing. This is also in my experience, important in order to keep platforms such as GitHub Issues or similar issue trackers from being spammed with simple questions or abuse.

While this is a very fine line to draw, attempting to remove your direct participation from that Discord as much as possible is also important. It’s also important though, to make sure that people’s concerns feel met, to avoid community backlash. If there are others in the community who can provide community support coupled with some official announcements / updates channel, this can be ideal. However, in most cases finding people that are willing to provide support for mods who aren’t also developing them is extremely rare. This leads to an inherent situation where you need to interact with people enough to placate them, but not too much as to constantly put yourself in the firing line. Overall, community management is a very large part of modding. It can even sometimes take more time than actual work on the mod itself, especially once a mod has matured.

Conclusion

The community is a considerable risk when getting into modding, but by taking a few steps it’s possible to mitigate some of it. While this is possibly the largest risk, it’s not worth letting it get in the way of you getting into modding. This is a risk that only starts to become truly problematic once a mod has reached considerable popularity, so for the most part can be at least partially avoided. I do feel it’s worth being aware of the possibility, however.

A modding community can be a risk, but it’s also an amazing thing. Seeing what other people are doing with your work, seeing people help each other, and just the general sharing of creative ideas. While it can be draining, it can also be inspiring. If I weren’t constantly exposed to everything people can achieve through my work, I don’t feel like I would still be doing it. If you’re a modder, I hope this article was and is helpful for you. If you’re a mod user, maybe take some time to think about what modders do for you, as well as other forms of content creators who enhance the games you love to play.