What do i use to download mods for games

Finding mods for games is the easy part. Regardless, there are all kinds of sites and services that host mods for gamers to download and use. Here are some of the largest repositories.

The Nexus sites are primarily community-driven, with free hosting and distribution of mods made by just about anyone. Mod DB is one of the oldest modding resource sites out there. Game developers can support the Steam Workshop for their games, which then allows communities to create and change the game, while handling all mod hosting and sorting through Steam directly.

Steam Workshop makes modding dead simple. Curse , recently acquired by Twitch, is a multimedia organization that holds a wide range of gaming-centric media. At E3 , game publisher Bethesda introduced the Bethesda Creation Club , a curated marketplace for mod creators to be able to make and sell content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition. The idea of paid mods may be a touchy subject for some, though.

Several games and series have specific community sites where most of their mods originate. The popular mods from these sources may be rehosted elsewhere, but these niche sites tend to be the primary community for the games. Here are some examples:. On the other hand, some especially useful mods support many different games. They show you the mods you have installed, include abilities to enable or disable individual mods, and can help let you know when an update is available.

That said, there are some mod management tools available that help in specific games. If your game of choice has enough mods, chances are someone has developed a manager for them. Here are a few popular ones:. Because of that, modders also created several key Bethesda-focused management tools.

LOOT helps you organize your mod list and load order, saving you the time and energy of having to learn what most of the order needs to be yourself. Additionally, LOOT can help point out opportunities for optimization in some mods, such as redundant components or dirty edits that will only slow things down.

Wrye Bash helps you get into the thick of things in terms of mod management by helping you access the parts of mods that might need cleaning or even file merging. Modding is about fine-tuning games to suit your tastes, making changes and alterations to games based on whatever you and mod creators see fit.

You could change something visual, you could change how your character gains power, or you could swap out the entire game soundtrack for a fan-made orchestral version.

The most popular mods for the most popularly modded games tend to be aesthetic mods that tweak the look and sound of a game. Take Skyrim , one of the most heavily modded games of all time, and take a look for some of its mods. But a picture is worth a thousand words. Not all games require the Nexus Mod Manager to work. For instance, the popular DSFix mod for Dark Souls can be downloaded manually from the Nexus Mods website and installed by dragging the relevant file into your Steam game folder.

The process for installing and using mods will vary from game to game, so be sure to read the mod descriptions carefully before attempting to install them. Connect with us. Continue Reading. Mod DB provides a voice for modders, and there are many who post developer blogs and news about mods in progress. It's also the site of the Mod of the Year Awards , a contest that's been running for the past 17 years, where users can vote on their favorite mods.

The three sites listed above should provide you with mods for just about every game you're looking for, but there are still other places to look for mods for specific games.

And if you're looking for a place to jump in, we cover mod news regularly here on PC Gamer, and we've got lots of articles to point you at some great mods for great games:. While we wish modding were always a simple affair, it can often be complicated and require a bit of work on your end.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind. Back up your saved games Using mods can have an effect on your saved games, and you may run into problems further down the line. Sometimes when a game is patched, the mod will also need a patch to be compatible with the new version of the game, and that might not happen immediately or, in some cases, ever.

That means you may start playing your game and find your modded save isn't working. Always be prepared for the fact that a modded game may stop functioning, you may lose your progress, or your save may no longer be compatible. Make a clean save of your game before you mod it, and keep it somewhere so you can restore it if you need to. Be very careful modding online games Modding a singleplayer game is a lot different than modding an online game.

There are a lot of multiplayer games that support mods, like Team Fortress 2, Ark, Rust, and many others. Not all do, however. It's hard to predict how developers and publishers will react to mods for online games, so you are taking a risk of being banned for using mods in a multiplayer atmosphere.

Be extremely careful the mod you're using isn't regarded as a cheat. This may require you to edit an ini or text file. Always read everything on the mod page Before you download any mod, fully read what the mod author has written. Installation may require more than simply extracting a file and putting it in the right folder.