How To Add Mods To Steam Games

One of PC gaming'south biggest strengths is its flexibility, and that advantage shines brightest when yous mod your PC games. While console games remain restricted to the gameplay and features shipped past developers, many PC games can be modified past the community to tweak most any aspect of the experience. Mods can offer enhanced graphics, issues fixes, fresh quests, yous name information technology. The best PC mods can alter games completely—and sometimes kickstart whole new genres of their own.

This guide volition teach you lot how to mod PC games, explaining the diverse resources available to find and install mods, equally well as how to manage your mods to avert potential conflicts. Welcome to the next stage of your adventure.

Annotation: Nosotros'll showtime this article by explaining how to use mods in PC games, but since this is a beginner's guide, we've got the why covered too. The 2nd page details reasons you may want to mod your PC games, along with screenshots and examples of some of the more popular mods bachelor.

How to modern a PC game

Before we brainstorm, be aware that many multiplayer games, including Grand Theft Automobile Online, will ban y'all if bring together an online session with modified files. (They're allowed in GTA V'due south unmarried player though.) Other online games permit the use of quality-of-life mods similar graphical enhancers, simply ban gameplay mods. Do your homework if you want to run mods while playing online!

Got information technology? Good. Allow'due south dig in.

Modding PC games doesn't follow a universal procedure. The required steps differ game to game and modernistic to modernistic. More often than not, modding requires some kind of alter to the existing game, such every bit tweaks to an .ini file or replacing texture files completely. Some mods may demand more in-depth preparation, such every bit decompressing a game's executable, swapping in some very specific files, and so repackaging it. Most mods will accept install instructions in their readme files or on their host sites.

Fortunately, some of the biggest mod communities offer custom tools that profoundly simplify the installation process. In the all-time cases, yous'll only need to click a button and the modding tool does everything else for you.

Nexus Mod Manager

The Nexus Mod Manager, which is still in open beta, works alongside the popular Nexus Mods site by handling mod file storage location, downloads management, and many installation paths. For the mods that support information technology, this allows y'all to just download and install from a single location instead of having to navigate a agglomeration of different game folders to make sure all the pieces are in identify.

Steam

It should exist no surprise that if you want to use Steam Workshop mods, you need to use Steam. The Workshop features within Steam allow you to subscribe to mods for games you own on the platform. Once yous do, Steam will handle the installation role, then keep your mods automatically updated, just like the balance of your games library. Not all Steam games support Workshop, though.

Twitch Desktop App (previously Curse)

The Twitch Desktop App has a handful of Twitch and community features, only recently, the mods application features from the previous Curse app has been rolled into information technology. Much like the Nexus Modernistic Manager, you can install mods through the app instead of dealing with each mod installation endeavour individually.

Finding game mods

Finding mods for games is the easy office. It's picking and choosing which specific mods you want that tin can get difficult. 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.

Nexus Mods

Nexus Mods is one of the well-nigh popular mod hosting sites, particularly for Bethesda's Elderberry Scrolls and Fallout games. The Nexus sites are primarily community-driven, with complimentary hosting and distribution of mods made by but almost anyone.

Mod DB

Modernistic DB is ane of the oldest modding resource sites out in that location. It'south typically known for being the popular host for mods of older games (similar the original One-half-Life) or being the chief distributor of the very popular Vicious Doom. In 2016, Mod DB caused GameFront—which used to be the largest mod hosting site in the globe—after GameFront close itself down.

Steam Workshop

If you couldn't already guess, the Steam Workshop is a modern hosting resources for games on the Steam platform. Game developers tin support the Steam Workshop for their games, which then allows communities to create and change the game, while handling all modern hosting and sorting through Steam directly. Steam Workshop makes modding dead simple.

Curse Mods

Curse, recently acquired by Twitch, is a multimedia system that holds a broad range of gaming-centric media. Curse has been near popular for hosting add-ons for World of Warcraft and other MMOs.

Bethesda Creation Order

At E3 2017, game publisher Bethesda introduced the Bethesda Creation Social club, a curated marketplace for mod creators to be able to brand and sell content for Fallout four and Skyrim Special Edition. You'll find the Creation Society baked right inside those games. The idea of paid mods may be a touchy discipline for some, though.

Game specific resource

sith lords restored — The Sith Lords Restored mod forStar Wars: KOTOR Two.

Several games and serial have specific customs sites where virtually of their mods originate. The popular mods from these sources may be rehosted elsewhere, only these niche sites tend to be the primary customs for the games. Here are some examples:

Fallout 1 and 2 – No Mutants Allowed
Minecraft – MinecraftMods
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Deadly Stream

On the other hand, some especially useful mods support many different games. 2 notable multi-game mods are ENBseries, which enhances the graphics in many modern titles, and the_bigg's Widescreen Mod, which adds much-needed widescreen support to classic CRPGs like Planescape: Torment, Baldur'due south Gate, and Icewind Dale.

Managing PC game mods

Steam, Nexus Modernistic Manager, and the Twitch Desktop App are as well tools for managing your mods. They show you the mods you have installed, include abilities to enable or disable private mods, and can help permit y'all know when an update is available.

That said, there are some mod direction tools available that help in specific games. If your game of pick has enough mods, chances are someone has developed a manager for them. Here are a few pop ones:

Grand Theft Auto 5 Modernistic Manager
Star Wars Knights of the One-time Democracy Mod Manager
Dragon Age Inquisition Mod Manager
Sins of a Solar Empire Mod Manager

Bethesda's office-playing games have been a modding favorite for years at present, and legions of mods are available all of them. Because of that, modders besides created several key Bethesda-focused direction tools.

Modernistic Organizer

Once the preferred mod manager for Elderberry Scrolls and modern Fallout games, the Mod Organizer offered much of what the Nexus Mod Director can practise with some additional features, such every bit beingness able to open upwards game'southward data archives and salve files for direct manipulation. Fun fact: Nexus Mods hired Tannin42, the creator of Mod Organizer, to piece of work on the Nexus Mod Manager in late 2016.

Loot: The Load Order Optimisation Tool

When you're trying to play with a large number of mods in modern Bethesda games, the club in which they load up tin can exist important. LOOT helps y'all organize your modern listing and load order, saving you lot the time and energy of having to larn what most of the order needs to exist yourself. Additionally, LOOT can help signal out opportunities for optimization in some mods, such every bit redundant components or dirty edits that will only slow things down.

Wrye Fustigate

Think of this every bit the transmission version of LOOT, with some Mod Organizer features on steroids. 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.

Now that y'all've learned how to modernistic PC games, it's time to dig into why you'd mod PC games.

Side by side page: What is game modding? Why you'd desire to modern PC games.

What is PC game modding?

Modding is nearly fine-tuning games to suit your tastes, making changes and alterations to games based on whatsoever you (and mod creators) see fit.

You could change something visual, you could alter how your character gains power, or you could swap out the entire game soundtrack for a fan-made orchestral version. Some folks are picky virtually the lighting; others may modify up the game'due south difficulty in ways that the default Easy to Hard calibration doesn't quite fulfill; and some may just be patching some buggy parts for the benefit of the game'south fan community.

While specific mods out in the globe volition have some crossover, we're going to break mods down into four major categories:

Aesthetics
Technical
Gameplay
Content

Types of PC mods

Aesthetics

The well-nigh popular mods for the almost popularly modded games tend to be aesthetic mods that tweak the expect and sound of a game. For many, it's near making things prettier, more realistic, or to push their hardware a bit further than the game can on its own.

Have Skyrim, one of the virtually heavily modded games of all fourth dimension, and accept a look for some of its mods. The nigh subscribed modern on Skyrim's Steam Workshop is a water retexture modern called Pure Waters past Laast. At NexusMods, the most downloaded Skyrim mod is a high resolution textures pack called Skyrim HD – 2K Textures. Skyrim has so many astonishing visual mods that it's easy to see why all kinds of games are finding new life through Hard disk remakes.

But a picture is worth a thousand words. Here'southward Skyrim running unmodded, but with Bethesda'southward Hard disk Texture packs installed…

…and here'south Skyrim with a slew of graphics mod installed: Climates of Tamriel, Natural Grass Texture Floor, Pure Waters, Realistic Lighting Overhaul, ENB, RealVision ENB, Skyrim Hd – 2K Textures, Static Mesh Improvement Mod, Skyrim Distance Overhaul LOD Improvement, and Ultimate HD Burn Effects. Click the images to overstate them if you desire to savour in all the improvements.

Sound mods are only pop in some games, but they tin do interesting things. Fallout three'due south GNR Enhanced adds theme-suitable music the radio and improves some of the immersion in the scripts of Three Canis familiaris, the game'southward radio DJ. Other audio mods focus on quality, such as swapping out the sounds of the various guns in the games for what's considered more authentic, higher quality versions. Towbie's Realistic Weapon Sounds for Fallout 4 is a good instance.

But there'south also a contrary side to artful mods, especially visual ones. Some mods focus on decreasing visual quality, to permit games to run amend on underpowered hardware or just increase the frame charge per unit for a more than buttery feel. Many competitive players reduce graphical quality but enough so that the important details are still visible, only the framerate can exist every bit high as the hardware will permit information technology to be. If a game'due south options don't quite cover what you need, you'd look to something similar Torcher's Texture Optimization Projection for Fallout 4.

regrowth overhaul — Spiffyskytrooper's Regrowth Overhaul mod adds a lot more light-green toFallout 4's postapocalyptic wasteland.

On this notation of frame rate optimization, we're getting dangerously close to what nosotros're calling technical modding.

Technical

Fixing bugs and enhancing system compatibility are the key reasons for technical modding. Sure, information technology may experience like every classic game is getting an HD remaster this week, but not all fan favorites are and so lucky. A supportive modding community can assist add together a much-needed layer of modernistic smoothen.

For instance, the legendary isometric RPGs of yesteryear—like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and Planescape Torment—were designed for 4:3 display ratios and resolutions in the 640×480 through 1024×768 range. Nowadays, most gamers are running sixteen:ix ratios supporting 1920×1080 and higher resolution. Playing the older games on modern monitors results in ugly black bars surrounding the film, or worse, visual stretching and distortion. To prepare this, mods like the_bigg'due south Widescreen Mod modify how the game scales upward for higher resolution, though you may demand to pair information technology with something like GhostDog'southward Planescape: Torment UI mod. GhostDog's mod tweaks the UI and text in classic games running at modern resolution, and so everything tin be seen, readable, and not wildly warped.

Here's how Planescape: Torment looks running windowed at default resolution on a 1440p display…

…and here'south Planescape: Torment in 1440p resolution using the aforementioned modernistic duo. Big divergence, eh?

Some mods take aim at player-discovered bugs. Bethesda's games are notorious for their (sometimes unsettling) bugs, and many Elderberry Scrolls modding guides start by pointing to community patches that squash them or fix hardware compatibility problems. Other games, such as Star Wars Knights of the One-time Republic: The Sith Lords, may contain unfinished content, causing some weird dead ends in gameplay and storytelling. Communities have banded together to resolve these in unlike ways, such as The Sith Lords Restored Content modern, which utilizes unused assets in the original game every bit well equally original efforts to effectively shut off the loose ends.

Just this kind of mod taps into the gameplay and content of its game, so let'south move on!

Gameplay

Gameplay mods change how you play a game, covering aspects like difficulty scaling, graphic symbol progression systems, control schemes, adding or removing sure mechanics, or even interface changes.

A perfect example of a mod that alters difficulty is Brutal Doom. This mod for the before Doom games—not the 2016 edition—effectively cranks everything up to 11 by adding a ton of enemies and giving foes new tactics. (It also profoundly expands the gore and destruction that Doom is famous for.)

The first Dark Souls game on PC used a sort of emulation to effectively translate keyboard and mouse into controller deportment, and mostly lacked control options. The resulting frustrations lead to the creation of the mod Dark Souls Mouse Fix and its current iteration, Dark Souls Input Customizer. These mods ditched the emulation and added raw mouse input, mouse acceleration and sensitivity settings, and key mapping. These control mods non only provide options for PC purists, but also opportunities for gamers with disabilities who depend on custom hardware and button mapping to get their game on.

Many gameplay mods can complement each other that provide a fresh experience to a game. Grim Dawn, an action RPG by Crate Amusement, has a popular mod compilation called DAIL that combines a bunch of gameplay mods into one. DAIL can conform the number of enemies that spawn in the game for a range of new difficulty options; it triples the corporeality of class trees for your character; and includes additional game types that mirror Diablo 3'southward rift system or Gears of War's Horde Mode… which takes us to the final mod category.

Content

Sometimes, you just demand more. The game was either so good, or missing just enough, that someone felt the demand to add together even more to it. Content mods tend to be a combination of the previous categories plus additional components that add together something new to the game. Mods like the earlier mentioned The Sith Lords Restored Content and Minecraft's Tinker's Construct introduce all kinds of content, from quests to equipment, that were not previously in the game. The additions accept their own visuals, sounds, and gameplay changes all combined. They're basically unofficial expansions.

minecraft — *Minecraft* with FTB Beyond modpack installed.

Some mods drastically overhaul the entire game, and sometimes spark new games and genres of their own. League of Legends, DOTA, and the entire MOBA genre was birthed by a modernistic for the original Starcraft chosen Aeon of Strife. Counter-Strike started as a Half-Life modernistic. DayZ and battle royale games like PlayerUnknown'due south Battlegrounds sprung from the Arma modding scene. And you lot can find full-length expansions, new factions, and more for Elder Scrolls games.

These are heavy duty mods. If you want to learn more virtually content and "total conversion" mods, check out PCWorld's list of 10 influential game mods that truly changed PC gaming.

Bottom line

Modding video games is a lot like playing card games or board games with firm rules. While some people like to just skip the jail mechanic in Monopoly, others might desire to pull out their favorite Warhammer 40k figure to have over the board in the name of the Emperor. Likewise, some gamers might want to replace Skyrim's dragons with Macho Homo Randy Savage or Thomas the Tank Engine. Annihilation is possible!

Now yous're armed with everything you need to know to start modding PC games. Take fun!