World’s Biggest Modding Site Has Been Sold After 24 Years: ‘The Strain Of Being Responsible For The Behemoth I Created Has Taken Its Toll’

Nexus Mods is changing hands. The vast database for free mods of PC games ranging from The Witcher 3 to Stardew Valley has been sold for the first time since it was created 24 years ago. “The strain of being responsible for the behemoth I created has taken its toll,” previous owner Dark0ne wrote in an update on Monday. “The stress of the job has been a regular source of anxiety and stress-related health issues.”

Nexus Mods is where thousands of modders go to share their creations. Whenever a new game comes out, be it big like Monster Hunter Wilds or small like Blue Prince, mods quickly become available on Nexus for everything from helping with inventory management to enhancing visuals. It’s been a cornerstone of PC gaming for many players for decades now, though Dark0ne suggested nothing much will change in the day-to-day now that he’s no longer running it.

“I started this project back in 2001, in my bedroom, with a 56k modem, an excitement for the upcoming release of Morrowind and with no grand ambitions or intentions,” he wrote in an update on the Nexus Mods website. “I didn’t set out to build a business, I just wanted to make a place where modders could share their work without worrying it would vanish into the internet either [sic] the next time a fansite went offline or a publisher decided they were done with it. That idea grew legs, sprouted arms, and turned into Nexus Mods.”

Dark0ne said he’s been looking for someone else to take over management of Nexus Mods for a while now due to all the stress of running a small online social network, but it wasn’t until recently that he found someone to take over who “really ‘gets’ the modding community the way I do.” He didn’t reveal who that someone is, though, or the price tag for the deal. Is Nexus Mods about to get way worse? Some users are already freaking out about paid subscriptions coming. Dark0ne claims not much will change in the immediate future, though.

“Behind the scenes, I’ve already been stepping back bit by bit,” he wrote. “Over the past few years, the team has taken on more of the weight and the site’s been doing better than ever. What’s changing now is simply the formality of it, making sure the right people are in place to guide Nexus Mods into the next era. That includes some structural updates to the company ownership that we aren’t shouting about, but I want to be transparent: they’re about long-term stability, not changing the values or direction of the platform. Nexus Mods is community-first and mod-author focused, that’s not up for negotiation.”

Some shifts have already been underway at Nexus Mods, which is run by a team of 40 people. A big one was moving to ease rules on modders getting paid for their work. Some modders now link to Patreons and other places where people can donate to them directly for ongoing updates to certain popular mods in games like Starfield and Elden Ring. Nexus Mods community managers said at the time that the goal was to find a way to balance compensation incentives with the desire to keep the modding scene free and open, even as companies like Bethesda try to monetize creator work in their games.

Nexus Mods has also recently taken stands again bigotry. The site refused to host a Starfield mod back in 2023 that deleted pronoun options from the game. Nexus Mods told 404 Media at the time that it wasn’t meant as a political statement, but as a way to protect its users. “[The] removal of diversity, while appealing to many, does not promote a positive modding community,” they said.