Desura - ModDB Move Into Digital Distribution

[Hectic Glenn]

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[br]After 2 years in development an official announcement on a project named Desura has been unveiled on ModDB. Their aim is to compete in the digital distribution market while providing huge support for mods as they always have done.[br]Desura is currently in a private beta with work still to do, but mods for the following games are already supported: Half-life 1, Half-life 2, Crysis, Battlefield 2, Battefield 2142, Far Cry, Celestial Impact, Unreal 2004 and Unreal 3.

Desura (like Steam, D2D, Impulse, GamersGate etc) is a digital distribution service for PC gamers. Unlike these platforms however which are just shops with little to no interaction between the community and the content available, we aim to bring the power and openess of ModDB to digital distribution.

Updating mods can be a pain, but Desura provides automatic patching for mods and allows teams to integrate the Desura API easily. Check out some of images of the user interface below.[br]

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[DEATHMASTER]

So...the mods are still free right? They're just trying to organize shit better?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Yep still free! Desura scans your PC for games first and detects which of the games it currently supports, are installed. Then you can move into the mod section and pick your mods based on categories / recommendations etc, you then just click install! It tells you the size of the mod and all necessary details and automatically places it in the right location. You can even launch the mod through Desura rather than Steam. (but it still works through Steam obviously)

Supports both Steam versions of games or retail (e.g. Battlefield games). I've found it really simple to use.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Sounds like I'll get more than 5 mods in the next 10 years.

 

[xdrive]

Theres already something like this city-17-episode-1 is using it. http://www.maxsi.dk/distribution/

I wonder if moddbs matches it.

Edit: The moddbs sounds very interesting. It will expose alot more people to mods.


P.S Are they also selling games on this? in one of the pictures i saw something about pricing for the games. I thought it was just for mods.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Apparently they will be setting up purchasing of games through Desura but that's another arm aside from the free mod management etc. Yeah C17 Maxsi is damn similar, definite conflict of interests there

 

[Lucid]

Sounds pretty cool actually.

 

[xdrive]

Apparently they will be setting up purchasing of games through Desura but that's another arm aside from the free mod management etc. Yeah C17 Maxsi is damn similar, definite conflict of interests there

Interesting. I wonder how well they would do with the sales of games though. I think people would much rather purchase them through steam. But you never know, this could be a steam killer

 

[Captain M4d]

Wow, that's pretty awesome. I think I'll give it a d/l when there's a public version.

 

[xdrive]

Ha look, "hl2wars dev group" is under the popular section

 

[63]

A little too late for something like this... Mods are a dying breed. Cool tho.

 

[Au-heppa]

A little too late for something like this... Mods are a dying breed.

Wat..

 

[ríomhaire]

Sounds very interesting. Keep us informed Glenn!

 

[Ennui]

A little too late for something like this... Mods are a dying breed. Cool tho.

lol wut

HL2: Wars development team's moddb group is in one of those screenshots

 

[Pvt. Shifty]

This is good for Steam. Reason being now Steam will get more competitive with supporting more games with mod downloads through Steam i have always wanted to download my BF mods through Steam.

 

[Barnz]

what happened to other one anyway

 

[FoxFire]

lol wut

HL2: Wars development team's moddb group is in one of those screenshots

With the utter complexity of current gen game engines, the classic modding scene is dying. Sure, a really talented group can still produce something amazing on something like the Unreal 3 UDK, but you aren't going to see the kind of activity you used to see on the older, simpler engines.

The kind of talent and tools required to make a full conversion mod is getting to the point where you can't have a job if you want to produce something in a decent timespan. Textures need to be at least 1024x1024, models need at least 10k polys, etc, etc. If you're putting that kind of effort into a mod, you might as well go into the game business...

This tend is even noticeable if you compare GoldSrc to the Source engine. GoldSrc had so many fun mods, while I can count the number of good mods on the Source engine with my two hands.

Oh how I long for the days of wacky HL1 mods and the like.

 

[Ennui]

People will continue to mod games within their own abilities, even if they can't match or exceed commercial quality anymore. I agree, the mod scene is changing, but mods are not dying... at least not yet. I do miss the days of silly joke mods for HL when there were 10 released mods for every 1 unreleased mod there is today, but times are a-changin'. I also kind of consider indie games to be part of the modding spectrum (since they often use existing engines, with amateur/semi-pro teams) and they are thriving today.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

What kind of pretentious name is Desura?

 

[Absinthe]

Source really needs a Rocket Crowbar sequel.

 

[Vegeta897]

Source really needs a Rocket Crowbar sequel.

And Scientist Slaughter House.