Some of their points are technically correct, e.g. that mods can increase the support workload if they don’t work properly.
Then again, even rudimentary mod support can mitigate that simply by displaying the fact that the game is modded in an appropriate place (like the start menu, log files, or the launcher if present). Then support can ask for that first and tell people to disable or uninstall their mods and call again. Boom, support workload reduced.
This is less possible with competitive multiplayer games but even there you might get away with something like a Stellaris-style checksum system. Simply declaring mods to be bad is just lazy.
Plenty of people do. Especially since broken mods can cause problems like unexpected crashes that might not be easy to trace back to the mod. If the game automatically sends in crash reports, a popular mod becoming unstable might generate significant work for a while.
A mod-aware game wil usuallyl point out right in the crash log that it’s modded and might even enumerate the mods. Makes it real easy to find out that “Jake’s Improved Graphics for 2.3 Continued” is the shared culprit.
For debugging. No amount of internal testing can match a few thousand players in the wild. Usually these crash handlers ask you if they can upload the logs but I’ve also seen a few games where you can toggle it in the options.
Some of their points are technically correct, e.g. that mods can increase the support workload if they don’t work properly.
Then again, even rudimentary mod support can mitigate that simply by displaying the fact that the game is modded in an appropriate place (like the start menu, log files, or the launcher if present). Then support can ask for that first and tell people to disable or uninstall their mods and call again. Boom, support workload reduced.
This is less possible with competitive multiplayer games but even there you might get away with something like a Stellaris-style checksum system. Simply declaring mods to be bad is just lazy.
What grognard goes to the game’s official support when a mod doesn’t work?
Plenty of people do. Especially since broken mods can cause problems like unexpected crashes that might not be easy to trace back to the mod. If the game automatically sends in crash reports, a popular mod becoming unstable might generate significant work for a while.
A mod-aware game wil usuallyl point out right in the crash log that it’s modded and might even enumerate the mods. Makes it real easy to find out that “Jake’s Improved Graphics for 2.3 Continued” is the shared culprit.
Why the fuck would you have automatic crash reports? Ive had games “crash” from mr alt-f4ing
For debugging. No amount of internal testing can match a few thousand players in the wild. Usually these crash handlers ask you if they can upload the logs but I’ve also seen a few games where you can toggle it in the options.
I get having the ability to send a crash report, im more confused about the automatically sending one part.