Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Modding Some Mod Authors Hurting the Community (About the "Open Letter")

There is this "open letter to larian" and a lot of mod authors who have dependency mods have put their name on it. I feel like the modding community (at least some of the authors at any rate) are becoming unhinged. This "open letter" is useless, as Larian already have released statements regarding mods, and more importantly it is hurting the modding community.

It comes off as extremely entitled. I'd like to point out that a game dev company doesn't owe anyone anything, outside of the product they sold when you purchase it. That's it really. That, and the product being in a playable, useable state. This entitled mindset is only hurting people who just want to mod their games--and even other mod authors who used these mods as dependencies for their own.

I personally will not be endorsing any mod author who's name is on that open letter. I will also be pulling any endorsements I've already given, and I will refuse to use those mods. I'd encourage other people to do the same. This "open letter" is a ridiculous excuse to act like an entitled, whinny brat, throwing a tantrum just because something is taking "too long."

I'd rather not mod the game at all and play completely vanilla (which is a very fun and replayable experience as it is), than support that attitude.

I saw someone post it on Steam, but I haven't read it precisely because of how negatively it was received.

What exactly are they demanding or having an issue with?

They are basically demanding stuff that Larian has said isn't even ready yet. Bullet points include:

"Clarity of expectations regarding official modding support"
"Support a moderation team with proper guidelines on how to handle situations"
"Mention of issues related to patches/hotfixes"


The problem here is that right now Larian does NOT officially support modding. Yet. They recently put a statement about it, but idk what they really expect when mod support isn't even official. And worse, these modders--many of whom have dependency mods that other mods rely on, are actively pulling them. It just hurts those modders as well as people using the mods, when suddenly they can't access a mod they need to download because it was pulled. They are also flat lying to Nexus, pulling them listed under "unresolved issues with the mod."

Quite frankly it reeks of entitlement and comes off as someone just throwing a tantrum because they are impatient.

I have not read the letter, but those are not improper things to ask for - although it sounds like they were making demands. Swen made statements about supporting modding and having official modding support quite some time ago and nobody had heard anything for months. I think having an open channel of communication in regards to expectations would be good for everyone.

It would also be nice to know if there ARE challenges they are facing what the nature of those challenges is/are. If some big boy is causing problems because they are being unreasonable (Sony) - then we need to expose that to daylight. Sony has been unreasonable in the past and once they get called on it they eventually back down. And if it's NOT Sony then clarifying the nature of the actual problem prevents speculation.

(Blasted Gateway Timeouts)

Meh, those "demands" sound fairly reasonable, especially after Larian's promises of a modding tool months ago and after they've won the "Best Community Support" Award last year

1. "Clarity of expectations regarding official modding support":
Sounds reasonable, given that Larian has presumably been working on it for a while, so they have atleast some idea on whats going to be avaliable.

2. "Support a moderation team with proper guidelines on how to handle situations":
Given what I've heard has been happening in the discord server, this is probably critically necessary.

3. "Mention of issues related to patches/hotfixes":
Probably not super possible.

4. "Maintaining a presence in the discord":
Suprised they don't, given a ton of other Game companies allow their devs to mingle with the players, whether it be related to questions of the game or random stuff.

Otherwise, what, you want them to leave? These people spend their free time and effort (patreon notwithstanding) making things that are used and enjoyed by tons of people. Meanwhile, complete radio silence from Larian (until recently, yes)
Perhaps hiding mods isn't the best way of getting popular support (see Reddit Protest), but if they don't want to continue working on their mods because of the lack of community transparency, that's their perogative.
(It also doesn't help that Larian abandoned DOS2's mod tools years before it's final update)

And to be honest, you should be glad they're trying this, because this is probably the only way to get Larian to actually earn that award and all it involves is the Community Managers interacting more with their community...

Also, even an ex-Senior Community Managers has stated, in his Glassdoor review, that they wanted more collaboration with players, but Larian seemingly doesn't like changing their structure around community involvement.

Hmmmm, hence these Larian statements:

https://www.gamesradar.com/baldurs-...to-add-mod-support-to-the-rpg-this-year/

https://www.xfire.com/larian-studio...rt-cross-platform-urged-fans-no-threats/

(Yep, been dealing with gateway timeouts ALL day. Wth is this all about, this is very bad today).


As for the demands, yes. They would be reasonable. IF mod supporting was official already--which it isn't. It would also make sense if Larian hadn't already posted on their twitter that yes, they are working on mod support and will be working more with modders...in time.

Right now, these mod authors are acting like a bunch of toddlers who aren't getting their way. It's ridiculous.

It's not so much that things are taking too long it's that there's almost no communication from the developer. They said it would release in September. Then 5 months later it's radio silence. I don't personally care how long it takes, it could take 3 years for all I care. I just would like them to say "it's coming, here's what you're getting".
These are not unreasonable. The tl;dr of them is as follows.
"Tell us what you're actually planning on releasing instead of using vague words like "customization".
"Get more moderators for your community"
"Give us a heads up if you're going to release a big patch"
According to larian they're planning to do all 3 soon.
They only put a statement out after they broke what mods worked and people got fed up with the constant radio silence.
This took 5 months and people raising a stink about it before they finally went "okay fine we're still working on it". Prior to this people assumed it was flat out cancelled because Wizards of the Coast demanded it. Additionally what we're getting is so vague it's to the point where it's not particularly useful. Like what does "customization" and "certain assets" mean?
The community just wants Larian to tell us what's coming. Considering it was promised to release back in September and it's been radio silent since then I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to update us. I'm not asking them to rush it or release it early I personally just want a heads up. Their silence is causing community strife and it's rich seeing them brag to other developers that the way you make money is by being community minded while completely ignoring/neglecting their community on the other hand. And seeing posts like "You're not entitled to anything" if you don't like it.

BG3 made 90 million dollars and sold 10 million copies. And yet Larian is completely taking its community for granted, and has for quite a while. They also stopped updating Divinity Original Sin 2's toolset causing bugs and we haven't received any communication on that either. Let me guess "You're not entitled to bug fixes for the mod support" either?

What part of "You are not entitled to know the inner workings of the development company" do you not understand? You are a THIRD PARTY MOD AUTHOR. You are NOT a developer on the dev team and modding IS NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED YET. You don't get to make demands like this. Skyrim didn't support modding for years, and you didn't see their mod authors crying about it. They knew what they were getting into when modding a game.

THIS game is still under development, and their game comes first, period, full stop. Making the game stable is more important than communication for a feature not even supported yet. Stop with the entitled whining and just be patient like everyone else. You all are acting like a bunch of man-child neckbeards who can't take "it's not ready yet" for an answer.

It's not just Modders but regular players as well. To be clear I don't agree with things like entitlement, hope, nostalgia and sentimentality because they are all forms of emotional thinking which is to say infantile ways of viewing the world and making decisions, so on that I agree with you. Also one of these fools reached out to someone on LinkedIn and was intent on discussing some very sexual matters which is entirely appropriate and creepy.

The message, which Larian seems to agree with, is that it would be helpful to have some communication on this score especially If you are investing in product they are making and you would like to put additional time and resources into creating things that elevate the work they are doing.

What remains to be seen is 1) Can Larian work to respond to reasonable requests from the community delivered in a civil manner through appropriate channels. 2) What is the status of the modding support they are working on and what challenges are they facing. 3) What is a reasonable expectation for what we can create in future?

Hopefully we can get answers to those questions and a good rep for the modding team on board soon.

They're not asking for constant information about the modding tools, just a general overview of what is coming with the mod tools.
And Larian has promised to fully support, so I don't see the problem in trying to get more concrete information.
Also, they directly refute what you just said in their letter.

Also, you do realise that the letter was also about improving communications between Larian and Players in general right? Things that should benefit everyone.
But, honestly, after reading your response as well as other's to their letter, maybe they should just leave;
If their community doesn't want to be improved, then they probably shouldn't bother.

Skyrim's Mod Tools were released 3 months after the game released, so idk what your on about.


And, so... what? Are the Community Managers developers too?
And if they are, then hire more people, they've got atleast $500m surplus just lying about now...


It's actually worst than that, BG3 has made between $470m - $1.1b and sold atleast 9m - 21.5m (Source: https://gamalytic.com/game/1086940), and thats just Steam alone.

TBH Larian has a long track record of being, shall we say, less than stellar at communications. Rightly or wrongly it's not surprising tempers are flaring.

Like others I think the "demands" are reasonable. But from what I've read the Larian staff are feeling threatened and that is not okay.

https://www.ign.com/articles/baldur...ut-threats-and-toxicity-over-mod-support

I'm not sure what the dev means by toxicity but directly contacting a dev crosses a line. When employees are off work their time is their own and people need to respect that.

And remember that it's just a game

+1

I don't know details on threats towards devs over mod issues, but I do know a Larian writer was being directly harassed and threatened on Twitter over an Origin character ending (that she did not even write, as far as I know.) There was also that incident on these forums where people were posting threatening statements towards writers over the Halsin/Shadowheart polyamory route.

To be honest, I don't blame the developers for not being more involved on the Discord server, given these incidents, and general track record of harassment among video game fandoms... But I do hope we get a slightly more detailed update on mod tool timeline in the not-too-distant future.

Full support with the awesome modding community !

Larian's communication has always been a total disaster with their most passionated (and engaged) players since the beginning of the EA.
During early access some players took many of their free time to give feedback, write, share opinions, report bugs and so on about the game to help Larian improve it.
Radio Silence was Larian's answer.

Modders are spending their free time for our enjoyement, to improve a game they love and eventually to teach some of us how to create mods, as they did with me during EA.
Radio Silence is Larian's answer.

Radio silence is driving passionnate players mad !

The modding community deserve love.
This awesome game Larian created will live in our heart for decades... but only the modding community will make it live on our screens for decades !

Let's support and hype them as much as possible so we'll still replay the awesome BG3 in 20 years as some of us are still doing with BG1/2 !

Of course, but larian is working on it. They announced official support a long time ago at release, but that it would be a later addition. They've pushed out MAJOR patches that have completely revamped the game:

• Ability to save Minthara if you side with the Grove.
• Mirror to change your appearance
• Camp animations to help make the game feel more alive
• Honor mode and Custom Game mode!!
• Revamped epilogue to show your choices matter and to go further with your party
• Added FSR 2.2, which is fantastic for our AMD brethern.
• Large amount of optimizations, bug fixes, and gameplay adjustments.

These things have a vast priority over modding support, and I'm thankful that Larian also shares my opinion. They ARE trying to do right by the community by trying to implement cross mod support. So mods can be added for everyone, not just PC players.

Some of the mods that have been hidden have been shared around by some large discords and other places, or just straight re-uploaded to nexus mods. Enough people are doing it to not cause that big of an impact to the modding community, but it's still cumbersome for some people to find some of those mods.

Those mod authors would not survive in the Time of Trouble. When Skyrim modding was at it's height and no word from bethesda. Shoot people kept modding it while bethesda would push out patches with no patch notes that would break the skyrim script extender.

Don't know for how long you are playing the game but some of us are actively playing for more than 3 years. And some modders are spending their free time to mod it for more than 3 years (ofc they knew official mod support would not be a thing, but it doesn't change the fact that some of them worked hard).

A bit more communication would have probably hurt Larian less than the radio silence may have hurt some modders and / or players giving love to this game for such a long time.

It was true during the early access and it is apparently true after release. Any kind of ETA is better than months of radio silence.

Since the very beginning of Early Access, one of my most anticipated games of all time.

They can work hard all they want on their mods, like mod authors do for many other games. This is the only game I know of where mod authors have acted like this. Larian doesn't need to communicate on projects they are working on. What these mod authors are doing here is unprecedented and pretty shameful.

Like what ? Like sending an open letter asking for an ETA and hiding some mods they have created ? What a shame

Some of them seems to be very frustrated and I can really understand why.
I've been very active during EA and spend hundreds of hours to give feedback, write detailed suggestions and talk about the game and I've experienced the same thing.
(i.e we had to wait for 2 years and a half to learn that Larian hadn't abandonned the idea of a reaction system. We talked about it in tons of threads and the radio silence was extremely frustrating).

Deal with that and stop spitting on them with your dramatic words. You are hurting "the community" a lot more than they are.
Don't forget to enjoy their mods.