NexusMods

History

Nexus Mods was initially founded by Robin Scott and a friend in August 2001 as a fan site for the Bethesda Softworks game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind under the name of Morrowind Chronicles. After the success of Morrowind Chronicles, Scott and the friend he was working alongside founded a company by the name of GamingSource and created the website TESSource, which allowed users to upload their modifications and content for games in The Elder Scrolls video game series. Scott soon became tired with the revenue of the websites being split when he was operating the websites by himself, and made the decision to break away from TESSource in 2007 and founded his own website under the name of TESNexus. Scott made use of the TESSource website with his new venture. This resulted in more than 200 additional games being supported by early 2013.

Nexus Mods as of January 2013 reportedly had 5 million users. Scott indicated in 2013 that the Nexus sites would remain free of corporate investment in the foreseeable future, also avoiding direct ads. Revenue instead came from premium memberships, with the site otherwise free. As of 2014, it was one of the largest gaming modification websites on the web, with over 971 million downloads since its initial launch, and a member count of more than 8 million registered users.

In November 2015, Nexus Mods announced that due to the release of Fallout 4, the website had over 10 million registered members. The following month, the website reported a possible security breach of account names, and recommended its members change their passwords. Financial information was not breached, as the website uses Paypal for all transactions.

Notable mods

Mods hosted on the site can change games in a number of ways, from adding a first-person perspective to adding fully developed worldspaces with voice-acted quests. Mods for The Witcher have been built for improving immersion, and NexusMods is highly noted for its support of the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and is often regarded as the largest website supporting modifications for games in The Elder Scrolls series of games, with sites like PC Gamer and Kotaku referencing Nexus in multiple articles regarding modifications for The Elder Scrolls series.

The website's hosting and publication of various mods has been covered in the gaming and computer press. In 2016, Forbes praised the "Alternate Start - Live Another Life" mod posted to Nexus for Skyrim: Special Edition in a feature article. In January 2017, a Fallout 4 mod on NexusMods was covered in The Express, with other Fallout 4 mods reported on by WWG, Paste Magazine, the Christian Times, and PCGamer.

Features

Nexus Mods requires users to register before uploading any files or downloading files over a certain file-size limit. User accounts integrate across all of the available sites, meaning a user only needs one account to make use of all of the Nexus websites. Each account and file page is also integrated with the Nexus Forums.

The website gives users the ability to:

In June of 2016, wide-ranging theft of NexusMods mods for other corporate mod websites was noted in the press, with Nexus owner Robin Scott (Dark0ne) criticizing Bethesda's lack of response to the issue. That month, Nexus added an extra permissions system to the website so stolen mods on other websites were easier to see. Although there was already an extensive permissions system for mods, the addition to the system for console modding allowed users to select what their intent for the mod was in terms of use, and where they would allow it to be available. It also allowed "console players to search the Nexus system for mods they can find via their console's Bethesda.net browser if they like the look of them."

Supported games

The Nexus Mods network supported 206 games as of October 2015, and features a single forum and a wiki for site and mod-related topics. The main Nexus Mods web page lists the various games for which mods are available, along with the number of files, authors and downloads. As of October 2015, games with the most mods hosted were:

Recently, the Nexus Mods site expanded to serve as a host for mod files for any modifiable PC game including Mass Effect and Minecraft.

Nexus Mod Manager

Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) is an open-source program associated with Nexus Mods available for the Microsoft Windows platform that automates the download and installation of mods for 17 games as of January 2015, including The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3. Advantages of using NMM over manual mod installation include easy organization, installation, and uninstallation of mods. According to the Nexus site, NMM "integrates with the Nexus sites to provide you with a fast, efficient, and much less hassled modding experience."