After providing a go-to place for very big and very buggy Fallout 4 mod Fallout: London last year, GOG have just announced that they’re expanding their efforts to be a go-to place of you want to easily play high-profile or must-have mods for certain games.
The old and also new game merchants have revealed a new initiative aimed at offering “seamless mod integration”, as well as announcing that they’ll be hosting Skyblivion – the modding project remaking Oblivion in Skyrim‘s engine that currently targeting a release this year – when it arrives.
Dubbing this integration push GOG One-click Mods, the retailers have tapped a selection of mods that either provide new stuff to do or key tweaks deemed can’t miss. The goal is to let you avoid the perils of time-consuming mod installation when you fire up the affected games.
The initial group of “handpicked” mods includes the aforementioned Fallout: London, Doom 3‘s Phobos mod, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines’ Unofficial Patch, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3’s Horn of the Abyss mod. Skyblivion’s set to join that gang once it comes out.
We asked GOG what went into selecting those specific mods as the starter group, wondering if factors like established relationships with certain modding teams or a desire to host mods for games that sell well on the store had played into it. “It was a mix of all those things, frankly,” a GOG spokesperson responded, “from the mods’ popularity and our existing relations to the quality, the quantity and the type of content they offer.
“Cultural impact also played a big role. Horn of the Abyss, for instance, is now an absolute must-have for anyone who loves Heroes of Might and Magic 3; once you have it, you cannot imagine playing without it. On top of that, some of our team members have deep ties with the modding scene, offering – completely unbiased, of course – insights on which mods we should prioritise. In some cases, it made the outreach process and contact with creators much easier – simply because there are mods we know and love, and communities we’re already part of.”
GOG claim this initiative “definitely takes things to another level entirely” compared to what’s gone before. “While we are actively working to expand it further, community response to these initial titles will be a key factor in shaping what comes next,” the spokesperson added.
It’ll be interesting to see what affect this initiative has going forwards. Right now, it only affects a few mod for a few games, so I can see myself using it to have an easier time when jumping into Skyblivion for the first time and giving Fallout: London another go. However, it’ll have a long way to go to factor into the largely Steam and Nexus Mods-based nature of the majority of the modding I do when I’m not grabbing one of these big, once-in-a-blue-moon total conversions.
It’s not going to be possible to seamlessly integrate every little mod, and if certain key mods for certain games end up as part of the inititive and others don’t, that could potentially cause some headaches. We’ll just have to see how things go.
