Nexus Mods, a popular website that hosts mods for over 1300 console and PC games, is restructuring their premium memberships. While the site is available to use for free to anyone, the premium membership allows users to browse the site ad-free, have a bigger private message box, and have uncapped download speeds. While any purchase would unlock lifetime access to the first two benefits (their account would be marked as a "supporter"), the uncapped download speeds needed to be renewed regularly, or could be purchased permanently for £49.99 (the "premium" users, separate from the supporters).

However, on August 3, Nexus Mods will no longer offer the option to purchase a lifetime subscription, and will no longer grant purchasers the supporter designation that gives lifetime access to the ad-free site or bigger PM box. They will also be removing the option to renew your premium membership for 3 or 6 months, leaving only two purchase choices: monthly, billed at £4.99/month, or yearly, billed at £49.99/year. They will still, however, continue to fulfill the benefits for those in the supporter category or those who have a lifetime premium membership, so if you'd like to gain permanent access to Nexus Mods' premium experience, you've only got two weeks left to do so.

Source

 

[pcwizard7]

People here can't see why they would do this. They probably hit a wall with new memberships and there not enough renewable memberships to keep up with the hosting costs. As more games and mods come out, more space and traffic bandwidth is needed eh go costs go up

 

[AbyssalMonkey]

Some mods are huge like 5 or 6GB a file and trust me they will take hours to complete from basic download speed. I went Lifetime premium so I could download the Final Fantasy XIII HD Project and UHD Movie packs which the fast download speeds were well worth the money. If you don't mind the wait or you download small mod files then premium wont matter much to ya. The game looks incredibly beautiful now btw.

This is the exact reason I don't like Nexus. They are too iron handed with their download schema. Either you download for free at a slow rate, or are forced to create an account to use the mod manager to download in bulk. As an experienced internet user, I have a bittorrent client. The restriction of being only able to download exclusively from them or nowhere is a false dichotomy they've set up to legitimize their own premium service. It's frankly why I've always looked elsewhere for mods than nexus. If this further causes the site to spiral downhill, I'd be glad with it. I'm not one to shy away from helping prop up p2p traffic, my 2TB/mo data usage shows this. It may be a drop in the bucket for such a site, but I'm confident I'm not alone in this attitude, as many other sites rely on p2p to lessen the load of their backend.

Instead of adapting, Nexus is choosing to die. I don't mind supporting creators, but I would rather hand them my money more directly than through a middleman. All the justifications of "It's to support the creators with points" seems to me like the same type of scheme video game companies use to keep their walled gardens away from prying eyes and deflect any criticism. Nexus is turning into a mining town, and people are actively supporting that.

 

[Mikemk]

This is the exact reason I don't like Nexus. They are too iron handed with their download schema. Either you download for free at a slow rate, or are forced to create an account to use the mod manager to download in bulk. As an experienced internet user, I have a bittorrent client. The restriction of being only able to download exclusively from them or nowhere is a false dichotomy they've set up to legitimize their own premium service. It's frankly why I've always looked elsewhere for mods than nexus. If this further causes the site to spiral downhill, I'd be glad with it. I'm not one to shy away from helping prop up p2p traffic, my 2TB/mo data usage shows this. It may be a drop in the bucket for such a site, but I'm confident I'm not alone in this attitude, as many other sites rely on p2p to lessen the load of their backend.

With torrents, mod authors lose the ability to control their mods, and they can't easily track download popularity of them.

 

[AbyssalMonkey]

With torrents, mod authors lose the ability to control their mods, and they can't easily track download popularity of them.

A) There's something blissfully ironic about mod authors wanting control over their modification to a game which is functionally being hacked.
B) Trackers have this built in functionality. Go to any tracking list and you can see the number of downloads. Nexus can do one better and not offer magnet links (they can be generated, sure) and track the downloads of the significantly smaller .torrent file.

All I'm seeing are excuses and bad decisions.

 

[Joe88]

In protest of Nexus Mods' new policy, some of Skyrim's most well-known mods will be leaving the site. https://t.co/aty4MocClx

— PC Gamer (@pcgamer) August 6, 2021

 

[DarknessPlay3r]

https://twitter.com/pcgamer/status/1423505735355445248

While interesting to see that happen, it has nothing to do with the premium cost increase.

Granted I agree with the thinking of being allow to remove our own content...