Moddb slowly dying? OR less active community. Thread

I've been apart of Moddb for year's! I remember when the forum's were buzzing with thread's and active conversations.

It's a barren waste land for the most part, if there could be a tumble weed in the corner that blows across the bottom of the screen it would seriously capture the scene.

It sadden's me something I joined when I was younger, around a time when I was still debating on going to school and self teaching for the game industry & was not a developer.... Now I progressed over 8 year's to be an animator, modeler, texturelist, I come back and it's former glory has all but disappeared. Development groups are in-active or dead- my past friend's who were phenomenal coder's, animator's, mapper's are all but gone.

It leave's me with a sunken heart, is there any other modding website's that have more of an active community? If so, where? Perhap's my talent's and reaching out to developers is at the wrong place, and the wrong time.

I came here as a modder and now doing it, commercially, for a profit. Never bothered much with the forums, except when I relax and just mouth-off.
8 years is a long time. People hang at specific game forums or engine forums, for help or just chat.

The game industry and 3D field is growing. The modding - not sure, just looking at the new addons here, it looks busy also. Just a different type of busy

Nope, ModDB? The modding community is even more active than ever, at least in certain parts of the community. Depends on what games we are talking about, Source mods are not the only mods available here on the site you know. We had a surge of new grand strategy mods lately (HoI IV, Stellaris and others) so the golden age of modding is not over, it simply shifted to other games because Valve completely forgot about development of new Half-Life and Source titles (let's ignore The Lab for a moment).

The only problem is 0 comments indie news, because nobody bothers to check indie news and leave a comment there.

Forums are indeed less active than before. We addressed this issue also in this thread some time ago, and the admins are already trying to implement some new things to get people back here. But, my guess is that people learned how to google, and google itself brings back more results and tutorials than some years before. So, no need to ask so many questions in the forums as before. Random threads are still active in the forums, though. And as feillyne said, mod, indie (and other content) development is more active than ever. So ModDB is definitely NOT dying. But the forums are definitely less active.

The only problem is 0 comments indie news, because nobody bothers to check indie news and leave a comment there.

I agree, and it's a shame. But I am not quite sure what could be done about that.

The forums have always been a quieter area of the site, as the activity is designed to occur in the game and mod profiles. We are currently working on a big redesign and initatives to modernize the site (join the beta when it launches) and it is edging ever closer.

We still reach 200,000 people daily which makes ModDB among the largest gaming sites on the planet, and modding is bigger than it's even been, but it is more concentrated on workshop + cosmetic mods whereas we are more about bigger total conversions.

and modding is bigger than it's even been, but it is more concentrated on workshop + cosmetic mods whereas we are more about bigger total conversions.

The Steam Workshop does scare a bit. More and more people like ease of access rather than variety and oftentimes quality (which is why GOG doesn't go well with many developers...). Steam is unfortunately a synonym for PC gaming and more and more people flock to it like sheep. Also, monopoly is never good.

ModDB was always a place for both total and partial conversion mods, and it's done a very good job so far. The numbers you gave are reassuring for now, but I hope they aren't dropping instead of rising.

Edited by: Plokite_Wolf

To be fair though, ease of access is a big thing, especially for small mods. A great example is Left 4 Dead 2. It's easy to browse through a selection of thumbnails for cosmetic items, click one button, and have it appear in your game. Works well for maps too, as there's no longer faffing around making sure everyone has the same version and has it installed right. You click the button and go.

But Valve isn't a monopoly, and it does have restrictions. Given how they are pushing for paid mods, I think it's reasonable to think that they are trying to white wash controversial content in order to make money. I don't think it's a coincidence that I've been hearing of Lovers Lab more and more over the past year or so.

Also, archival stuff. Will moddb last forever? I don't know. However, right now it's the best we have for mod preservation. Mods can easily be removed from Steam without warning or reason. Since Half Life 2, we've seen how mandatory updates can, and will, kill mods (RIP Half Life 2 Subsistence). That seems to be the biggest threat to mods these days, so maybe that's a small victory, but it's something.

Steam Workshop scares us a bit too, standalone files seem to never get lost - but DRM'd stuff hidden behind "ease of use" might. We plan to never pull the plug on ModDB, we run as lean as we can and have survived for 14 years now despite Fileplanet, Gamefront, Reloadnet and many other modding communities failing in that time.

Great responses!

I just found out about Moddb website and I am pretty confused! Why does it looks so similar to indiedb.. Even the games update news are the same.

Do people update their games here and there too?

ModDB is the "older brother" to IndieDB, and they seem to share their databases mutually and with SlideDB, VRDB and the newly acquired GameFront.

BTW, this is an entirely unrelated thread.

Edited by: Plokite_Wolf

They are all part of the same network,with the same content just filtered differently. We are working on more advanced ways to differentiate the sites but as you can imagine it is a slow process!

I've seen other ways of acquiring mods, such as Nexus Mods and even simply through Steam Workshop becoming a lot more prominent in recent years, is this pulling potential modder base away from ModDB? If so, do you intend to compete? I have heard that the ModDB staff are generally on excellent terms with the fellas over at Nexus Mods, which is nice to know.

We greatly respect Nexus Mods and also have a common challenge being the DRMification of mods which we are both trying to avoid.

Our challenge stems from a few factors. Firstly we are generally a site for massive total conversions (which don't exist as much these days as most teams just work on an indie game instead). Secondly, we are a stronghold for FPS mods and these games don't seem to be modded as much. Finally, it appears a lot of single purpose communities have popped up like GTA5mods, Nomanskymods etc to cater to just one game. Those sites trouble me as they appear to dissapear once the games lose popularity, causing mods to be lost with them.

INtense! wrote:

Secondly, we are a stronghold for FPS mods and these games don't seem to be modded as much.

Don't forget RTS titles

C&C and BFME communities still massively use ModDB for their work.

Very true, shame C&C is not actively developed anymore

Considering what the last two released titles and the last cancelled one looked like, I'm very glad this is the case (and that's coming from an active C&C community member). C&C2013 would have opened doors to microtransactions and worthless paid DLCs like the rest of the industry has gone these days.

Though for some reason, the cancellation did demoralize a good chunk of the community, even from modding. I guess the rest of us will always have the classic games and classic mods (like Mental Omega APYR)...