Rhiannon (she/her) is the Deputy News Lead and Chief Reporter at TheGamer. You may have heard her on the BBC or read her words at TechRadar Gaming and TechRaptor. She won MCV’s Journalism Impact for Women in Games in 2025.
At TheGamer, you will often find her chatting to game developers, writers, and actors about their crafts. This includes a deep dive into Cyberpunk 2077’s narrative, and a series on the making of the Fable trilogy.
She also follows industrial action and existential threats to its workers, particularly the use of generative AI. As part of this, she’s explored how AI Darth Vader sets a dangerous precedent, and was one of the first reporters to look into generative AI dating companions.
Ever since we got games in our hands, we’ve been modding them. In recent years, this has become more mainstream, with games like Skyrim and Baldur’s Gate 3 even officially supporting mods on console.
For years, the go-to place for mods was Nexus Mods, which lets you sort them by game and mod type, and also nab a bunch of mods at once in a ready-made collection. Other than that, you’ve got Game Banana, which is more old school, and mod.io, which partners with game publishers for official mod support.
But now, a new site is throwing its hat into the ring. GGMods has been announced today and will launch on January 7, 2026. GGMods will boast a few gimmicks to differentiate itself from the competitors, but the one that stands out the most is its aim to provide modders with a “salary” for their work, rather than the one-off donations from users they can get on Nexus Mods.
GGMods Wants To Be A Creator-First Alternative To Sites Like Nexus Mods
“For decades, these creators have acted as the industry’s underground heroes, finding solutions and expanding on beloved worlds simply for the love of the craft,” reads the GGMods announcement. “Today’s generation of modders produces studio-quality work that often rivals the AAA developers they emulate. Yet they exist in an underground economy of passion, releasing masterpieces for free while the platforms hosting them have remained archaic.”
Explaining how GGMods will aim to differentiate itself, it outlines the payment plans. “GGMods is selecting top-tier talent to receive official backing through salaried contracts, giving elite modders the resources and support to build flagship content while mentoring the next generation of creators,” the announcement reads. “Moving beyond opaque reward pools, the platform introduces a transparent, fixed-rate revenue system and development grants. The model ensures that creators driving traffic are the ones benefiting from it. With a clear engagement point system, modders can calculate their exact earnings.
“GGMods also offers Completion Grants to help promising projects cross the finish line, plus exclusive partnerships where creators receive upfront compensation and ongoing promotion.”
Of course, this will all be for nothing if GGMods can’t convince modders to sign up. In aid of this, a Discord server is being opened, and the community is encouraged to help craft the site. However, this would be quite the shakeup in the modding community, and the fact that so many modders release their work widely and without expecting any money in return has often been seen as one of its strengths. But as long as the mods themselves are free to download, the community may see this as faithful to the spirit of modding.
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It helps that the site aims to host community events, like mod jams and competitions. These will be set around particular themes, like “map breaker” or “make it cursed”. On top of that, it promises “IP protection”, which could make it appeal to those modders who dislike it when others in the community edit their work and share it around.
For the time being, GGMods will be growing its community on Discord. We’ll be able to see what mods are on offer through the site starting from January 7.
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How do they think they are going to pay for those salaries and contracts? People aren’t going to pay for mods. Steam already tried this and it failed.
2025-12-26 12:34:53
Thank God. Nexus needs some good competition to keep them honest.
2025-12-26 18:21:04
If this turns into a paid subscription based site, I’m gonna be pissed.
2025-12-27 11:12:39
