Where to find the best game mods
NOT REALLY FAMILIAR WITH MODDING, BUT WANT TO DIP YOUR TOE IN? LET US POINT YOU IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.
EVER SINCE ID Software opened up the original Doom to modding way back in 1993, there has been a vibrant community of people willing to create game mods and share them on the internet. The modding community has even been responsible for some of the greatest games of the past 20 years: DOTA, Counter-Strike, Day Z, Garry’s Mod, Team Fortress, The Stanley Parable and dozens more started out as total conversions of other games. If you haven’t explored modding much, you’re really missing out. So why not check out the following...
THE BIG-UNS
There are three major collections of game mods on the internet, each covering hundreds of games with literally tens of thousands of mods available.
STEAM WORKSHOP store.steampowered.com
If you’re familiar with one modding community, this is probably it. The Steam client actually has a built-in mod sharing and downloading tool for games that support it. It is restricted specifically to games that have modding supported by the developer and, frankly, it’s not very well organised or maintained. But it is right there, making it awfully convenient, and for games you’ve downloaded from Steam, it makes it fast to add and remove mods.
The first thing you need to do to use it is go to your library and select the game you’d like to mod. Then under ‘Steam Workshop’, click on ‘Browse the workshop’, which will take you to the workshop tab on the game’s Community page. Then find a mod you think you’d like (looking at what’s most popular/top rated is a good place to start) and click on ‘Subscribe’. It will start the download.
Once you’ve done that, launch the game from within Steam and you’ll see that the launcher page has a ‘Mod manager’ button. Click on it, and you’ll see all the mods you’ve subscribed to for that game. Tick the check box next to each mod name to enable it.
NEXUSMODS www.nexusmods.com
NexusMods is most famous as the go-to place for PC mods of Bethesda games, specifically the Elder Scrollses and Fallouts. Even with Bethesda now having its own mod page, it’s still the top source for those mods, with a huge number of mods that have never appeared on Bethesda.net (and probably never will). In addition to the Bethesda games, it also hosts a variety of mods for other games: GTA: San Andreas, Mount & Blade, Unreal Tournament 2004, Call of Duty, Dragon Age, The Witcher 3 and many others — but really, for most non-Bethesda titles you’re probably better off visiting ModDB.
NexusMods provides an app, Nexus Mod Manager, that you should download and install (you’ll need to register — there are free and premium accounts). It starts by detecting your installed games, then it manages your mods, grabbing them from the NexusMods site and installing them in their correct location for the game, as well as making most configuration changes necessary. It’s a little raw, but fast once you get the hang of it. Once you have it installed, you can click on the Download (NMM) link for a mod in your browser, and it will launch the app and install the mod with it.
MODDB www.moddb.com
Probably the net’s number-one source for non-Bethesda game mods, ModDB covers pretty much everything. If a game can be modded, it will most likely end up here, with titles ranging back to the original Doom, through Half-Life and its many, many mods,
right up to recent games. Strategy games, RPGs, action games, platformers — they’re all covered, with way too many to list here.
It doesn’t come with a convenient app or installer for you; you just have to read the instructions provided with individual mods. They will tell you where to put the downloaded files, what changes you may need to make to any config files and (hopefully) how to cleanly uninstall the mod when you’re done with it.
SMALLER AND GAME-SPECIFIC COMMUNITIES
Though those are the big ones that everybody should know about, there are plenty of smaller and game-specific sites that we love as well.
5MODS gta5-mods.com
If you’re looking for mods for GTA 5, this is where you’ll find them.
ARMAHOLIC www.armaholic.com
A great source for mods for the Arma games, including Arma II, III and Armed Assault. The organisation is a little confusing, but there’s a lot there.
BETHESDA.NET bethesda.net
With mods for its games now available on consoles, Bethesda needed a way for those users to browse and select mods, so it created
Bethesda.net. Flag the mods you like on the site, then, in the game itself, open the Mods menu and use your Bethesda login to download the mods.
JAGGED ALLIANCE GALAXY www.jagalaxy.com
Take a trip into the way-back machine, to a time when you loved Jagged Alliance and its sequel. Yep, mods are still being made for it, and you’ll find most of them at Jagged Alliance Galaxy.
MINECRAFT MODS www.minecraftmods.com
You can grab Minecraft Forge here as well as the mods themselves. Another worthy site is Minecraft Forum, www.minecraftforum.net.
NO MUTANTS ALLOWED www.nma-fallout.com
A great source of mods for Fallout 1 and 2, as well as Fallout: Tactics.
SIMTROPOLIS community.simtropolis.com
The largest online community for Sim City 4 and the 2013 version of Sim City, it’s also the home of the most active online modders for those games. Click on the ST Exchange link to find them.
THE GIBBERLINGS 3 www.gibberlings3.net
The Gibberlings 3 is probably the most active community of Infinity Engine modders — that’s the game engine that powered the awesome Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale games. There are new quests and locations, as well as bug fixes and tweaks.
THE NAMELESS MOD thenamelessmod.com
Although the original Deus Ex wasn’t really built for modding, there are several fantastic mods for it. The best is probably the Nameless Mod, but you can also try Deus Ex: Revision ( and the Shifter mod (available on ModDB).
www.dx-revision.com) THE NEVERWINTER VAULT neverwintervault.org
Neverwinter was a game that was built to be modded, and even now, there is an active community of people releasing new modules for Neverwinter 2. You’ll find them here.
TOTAL WAR CENTER www.twcenter.net
The top destination for mods created for Creative Assembly’s Total War games, from the original Medieval: Total War up to Total War: Attila.