How Modding Helps In Destroying Exploitation In The Gaming Industry?

Many software companies choose to strenuously defend their intellectual property rights in the software they develop. But some of the developers in the gaming industry have different approaches to this, they allow or even encourage users to modify (or mod) their games for them. 

Why not all gaming companies allow this to happen? What are they protecting? Are monopoly and exploitation connected to this? Or simply the game isn’t really suitable for modding?

Well, we’re going to find it out what’s behind those walls that some gaming companies are trying to hide from the public.  

And what important role modding is playing to slowly stop this aristocratic gaming industry from monopoly?

 The Gains vs. Public Interests vs. Developers

If you have read my previous article titled “Overcoming exploitation in the gaming industry with Modding” I clearly sighted that the video gaming industry is about to surpass 138 billion USD by 2021. Meaning, it all boils down to business again, at the end of the day if you are a greedy business owner profit is more important than sharing a bit with the community. These developers will do everything to stop modders from Modding, and from dominating the market with free additions, surely they will. You bet!

They simply don't want to lose money.

In case they release modding tools, based on the business point, the game will have a longer lifetime; therefore, selling a sequel is no longer an option. They will be having a hard time making money from cheaply made DLCs since the community would make better additions to their games for free.

In contrast, from the developer’s point of view, there are games that don’t really need modding and there are two main reasons for this:

First, because games are developed to run as efficiently as possible within a set of specifications or requirements if you will and developers already squeeze every last bit out of the game to make it run good enough on your console. This applies a bit less to pc games hence most modded games are found on the pc.

Second, because it takes a lot of man-hours for the developers to implement a system that allows users to modify the game. Sadly it isn't as easy as just port the whole game engine with the game release. The user would have access to all the code and assets, which game studios want to keep private to some degree in most cases. So to keep things private but moddable the developers need to create a kind of API (application programming interface) that allows the user to mid the game without opening up the things the game studio wants to keep private.

But here's an extra one, there are actually a lot of games that could theoretically be modded despite all of this. But it takes a bunch of reverse engineering, extensive skills, and a lot of time to do so. A less intensive example of this is the original dark soul's release on pc which can be modded without any official support or any intention of it being modded.

Some skeptics believed that modding is slowly dying out because games today are hard to make. They believe that putting that kind of serious time into making something, with free tools out there like Unity, UE5, and Source 2, why make it in someone else's game, where you'll make no money, have much less exposure and are hampered by the original developer's design choices?

I both agree and disagree with their point of view; however. I can assure you modding definitely isn't dead or dying, take a look at the XCOM Long War mod. A major patch of LW generates as many players as a DLC release. It's basically lead to a resurgence of the game, and undoubtedly a lot of sales afterward.

The Benefits We Get From Modding

A huge community was formed across the internet because Modding has grown immensely over the years. Modding has introduced an entire element of creative implementation and allows talented individuals to share their creations for the world to enjoy.

Thanks to modding for letting these multiple intellectual properties exist today. Multiple games studios have formed because of the success of their mod(s) which were later developed into full-blown games.

Modding serves as a gateway for talented minds to come together and collaborate and the results can be life-changing.

Teamwork - the concept introduced to us by modding and how incredibly important this is within video game development. Majority of the cases, serious teams will move along the pipeline using specific software keeping track of the tasks and assignments for the team members. Commonly practice within the industry, and gives modders familiarity with this concept, and how workloads are divided among various positions.

 

What we know so far…

Maybe, it’s too selfish to say that some developers just don't want their game to be touched and tinkered with; I know there’s always hidden agenda behind this kind of reasoning. But whatever reasons they have it’s not for us to judge them maybe they think it’s really for the best of their game OR maybe they just want to sell us DLC. Lol!

You don't have to know how to mod to use a mod. You just have to know how to enable mods for a specific game. And mods don't inherently make the game harder. Some may make the game harder, but others may make it easier.

I’m just thankful modding comes into the picture, as it greatly helps both the game interface and users playing the game. Thanks to the modding community for making it free to us, hats off to modders!

To sum it all, modding teaches us dedication, passion, and creativity to employers, and shows them that you are a heuristic learner in which you are internally driven and willing to do what it takes in order to develop high-quality material for the game projects. This is a passion at its finest.