Velheim devs take stance against paywalled mods

The developers of Valheim have released an update on the game official website, detailing the attitude Iron Gate Studio has taken towards their game. In short, mods are fine, as long as they are not paid and are clearly marked as unofficial.

This post, an attempt to establish exactly what kind of mods are developer-approved, comes after months of community outcry over official mod support for the MMORPG. The game has had a dedicated modding community for some time now, however, with no official stance on the issue, many have been confused and concerned about the validity of such content in the eyes of Valheim’s creators.

The first major point of order addressed in the statement was the team’s attitude towards mods for Valheim. “First of all, while we don’t have official mod support, we’re definitely happy to see people interacting with our game and creating their own mods. It’s definitely flattering that you want to be creative and add your own.” Ideas! Iron Gate does not have any official mod support which essentially means that any creation and use of mods is done at your own risk, and that we cannot guarantee that mods will be compatible with newer versions of the game.”

Following this, the Iron Gate Studio team clarified their stance on paid mods. “However, what has caused us the most questions is the phenomenon where mods cost money. We definitely understand that you spend a lot of time creating a mod, and that you may want financial compensation for that, but Iron Gate does not condone the block modified content behind a paywall”.

He continues: “We believe that charging money for a mod goes against the creative and open spirit of modding itself and therefore we urge all mod authors to make their mods available to everyone who wants to play them. This should include the entire mod, and not just have part of the mod available for free while another part costs money.If you want to show your appreciation for the author of a mod, you can of course still support them with a voluntary donation, but we don’t want getting paid to be a requirement to access a mod.”

Finally, the statement asks modders to clearly mark their work as unofficial: “In addition, we would also greatly appreciate mods making it clear that they are unofficial mods, both in-game and on any website where the mod is available. Sometimes joining a dedicated modded server will automatically trigger a mod to download, and we just want to avoid confusion for players so they can tell if they’re playing a modded game or not.”

The debate around paid mods is an old one, and it has become more widespread in recent years due to the overwhelming amount of work that goes into some of the most important creations out there. Regardless of size or scope, the argument that people should be paid for their transformative work is compelling: if you create something and release it to the world, why shouldn’t people pay for it?

However, this becomes a murkier topic when paywalls are introduced, as mentioned in the Iron Gate Studios statement. There are many concerns regarding mod charging, including but not limited to how that would affect intellectual property rights, how that would influence modders to create content for monetary gain rather than passion or genuine need, etc.

EA Maxis actually enforced something similar a while back when it comes to The Sims modders, too, requiring that no unofficial modded content be placed behind a paywall. This also caused an uproar among fans who earned income from his modding work.

It is because of these concerns along with the Valheim team’s own views on the mods that has resulted in this strong stance on the matter. Do you agree with them on this? Let us know below!

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