Mods Make Games Evergreen | GC Vazquez

I’ve been replaying a lot of Stardew Valley lately. I’m not replaying Stardew Valley for the new content patched in long after I beat the game on release. I’...

I’ve written a few times about mods and cheats claiming that in a single-player game, there is no cheating, only house rules and that mods/cheats and other subversions of developer intent improve the game landscape and that some devs/publishers restrict them not for artistic reasons but as a money grab. Here, GC Vazquez makes a similar argument, but also highlights the ways that mods extend the lifespan of a game, meaning that publishers who clamp down on them in an attempt to sell microtransactions lose out in the long run.