Nexusmods takes firm stance against paid mods in latest policy update

Nexusmods, the biggest mod-hosting platform for PC modders, has put out an official statement about their stance on official paid mods, specifically in regards to paid Creations on Bethesda titles (Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Starfield). In effect, they are severing all ties to the paid mods ecosystem by denying to host mods that are correlated to any paid mods directly or indirectly.

The official policy update can be found in their policies and guidelines page (Donation Options and Guidelines). While it's in relation to Creations, other realms of pay-walled mods are also affected by the new restrictions: mods gated behind Pateron subscriptions, for example, cannot theoretically have a lightweight free alternative on Nexusmods to incentivize paying up for the full experience.

So, what changed and why?

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Why Nexusmods is decoupling itself from Bethesda's paid Creations system

Official statement from Nexusmods team (Image via Nexusmods Forum || Bethesda Softworks)

Bethesda's relaunched Creation Club system for Skyrim, Fallout, and Starfield presents a lucrative storefront to sell your mods for direct financial incentives. To pave an even smoother path, a recent Creation Club policy change essentially gives modders a way to monetize currently free mods.

Nexusmods now has a firm anti-solicitation policy to ward off ways in which mod authors can cheese the system to place ad mods bringing traffic to their paid Creation. The explicit policies are now laid out under the new 'Publisher-Endorsed Paid Modding Rules' section of Nexusmods.

Nexusmods can now take down mods and deny hosting them based on the following guidelines:

• Lite, preview or trial versions of paid mods cannot be hosted on Nexusmods. In other words, a mod author cannot upload a feature-stripped "inferior version" of a complete paid mod hosted elsewhere.
• Patches and add-ons for paid mods cannot be hosted on Nexusmods. This also goes for any mod that has a paid mod as a dependency, i.e., if a mod needs a paid Creation to function, it is not allowed on Nexumods.
• Following the previous point, modlists that contain any paid mods cannot be part of the Nexus Collections system.

Some allowances are in place for mod authors who want to link their paid mods (not related to any free mod held on Nexusmods). However, the linked paid mods should also have a backlink to the mod author's Nexus profile on the platform where they are hosted. Additionally, such links are subject to several Advertising Limitations to prevent loopholes.

Links to mods held on a third-party monetization platform not directly held on the game publisher's system (such as Patreon or Ko-fi), on the other hand, are straight-up not allowed on Nexusmods.

On the forum post announcing their official statement on the matter, the Community Manager explains how paid mods are in direct conflict with their mission:

"We firmly believe that modding should be a pursuit of passion first and foremost, with financial compensation being a nice bonus but not the main driver of creating content. Our mission is to "Make Modding Easy" and we strongly believe that paid modding is in direct conflict with that goal."

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But what about Skyrim Anniversary Edition?

Skyrim's Anniversary Edition bundles many extra plugins that were formerly Creations on the old CCC platform. However, these are now considered DLC, and as such, Nexusmods will continue to support mods that depend on or expand upon Anniversary Edition content.

This does not go for other paid Creations, including all monetized user-generated content. In effect, this decoupling is a move for the better, letting Nexus Collections exist as a fully free modlist-curating platform. Nexusmods is a large enough platform for this move to particularly affect the paid Creations scene on the whole, further widening the rift between paid and free modding worlds.