A lot of posts i read (not just here) in one way or another say 'unless we get tools, we are not buying the game', that about as effective as these 'boycotts' which i have to admit do make me chuckle.

If a new game comes out and they show you enough explosions and shiny things, publishers know people will just fall over themselves to get hold of it. Once you brought it, they don't really need you anymore. when the numbers do start to drop, they check out a quick map of rehashed material and there you go, the numbers are back up.

Take bethesda's skyrim, although a bit late they do support there players with a toolset and extensive support, the editor is very good but because it's also very different to say hammer or radiant, people don't want to learn it.. Now this i don't understand, people want modding - a game gives modding support - people wont learn editor Just look at the results of the current skyrim poll.

But my main concern is as modding dies, so does the community. I have seen some great faces here but who have since vanished, as the members reduce, so does the level of support as the support drops so do people coming to look for it.. It's a viscous circle with a bad outcome. As a lot of people here may know, its takes a long time to build up a community but it can be destroyed in a flash.

About Skyrim mod tools, It takes a long time to get used to new tools. Took me about a year to get Radiant down.

I don't think modding will die because if you want you can create your own game via UDK and release the game and let people mod it.

This is great, I feel like we're getting some good answers here. On the subject of skyrim, I added 10 video tutorials to the site last week. You can find them here. I'll get some newer Unreal based content added as well, if you guys want?

Mystic writes...

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that its no boycott by me and 98% of my clan. Its cold hard truth more like it. As I said earlier... I know these companies are still going to make their bookoo bucks... but I also just realized that its not even the uninformed or "I don't care" attitude fan boys that are really supporting them, its the little kids playing their XBoxs and PS3s that aren't old enough to have any real common sense and could probably sell them the same exact game with literally no changes and most wouldnt notice.

Its because of this that the PC Community is getting shafted. These companies have no incentive to want to make a AAA game like CoD1 - CoD4 were. Go back in time and kill off the makers of the consoles and I bet things would be a lot different today.

But I still stand my ground on the fact that if it wasn't for all the support from players, modders and mappers from the PC Community, within those first couple of years... the CoD title honestly might not have gained the recognition that it has.

But even with all the common facts, I still think Activision, Trey and IW are completely wrong with their decision to take away supporting mods and maps. The PC Community may indeed be the minority now... but the numbers are even that much smaller because of the way they just stopped giving us tools. And in all reality, giving us the tools would probably put more money into their pockets because I bet a ton of old mappers and modders would come back to the community if such a thing happend. These companies act like the tools will be their death and its not the case. I personally ran a poll when my clan base was over 150 members and most said that they would still purchase DLC even with tools being released and its because for the small price to pay for the DLC it adds NEW CONTENT to our game and who would stupid enough to pass up new content? Hell... the PC Community saw its first major loss of players even with the game having mapping and modding... CoD5 W@W.

That game never even came close to seeing its full potential and mostly because Trey opted to fall back on a beaten like a dead horse theme of WWII. I know a lot of people who moved onto other games when it was first announced that it was using that beaten theme. Add in the fact that the games redirect was broke for some time... and then the tools were half broke ( and still to today are not 100%) and the PC Community lost a lot of the few remaining quality mappers and modders who got completely fedup waiting on these things to be fixed. I bet CoD5 never even saw 40% of its potential.

And of course it was right after all this that Activision shoved its fist up our orifices by going 80 steps backwards releasing MW2 and its been a steady downward spiral since.

DeekCiti writes...
I thought they were gonna release mod tools after the release (Thought I read it somewhere :S)


Well I am still active on CoD4 modding but it takes a lot of time to do some big stuff. Anyway I must agree to the fact that I would have liked mod tools(that include creating maps!) for Black Ops, still sad about that one! So in my opinion definitly the fault of the Developers

scillman writes...
They have not even announced their game or even platforms, yet they announced post release support for PC this early? Sounds sketchy, as well as the source of whoever said that unless it was posted publicly by Abbie Heppe (their CM).

I wouldn't hold my breath for Respawn putting out any kind of game that has mod and mapping support... they are puppets to EA and I don't think tools are something they feel are important. Look at BC2... was a couple months or so prior to its release and we were told that tools would be possible and they would focus on them once the game was released.

Pre-orders spiked after the news, but then literally weeks before release they turned tail and said tools would be impossible because the version the developers were using were somewhat complicated for even them and too try and dumb them down to a level that would be functional and still usable by the average person wasn't in the cards.

HarryNutz writes...


Respawn is a independent studio, and they own any ip's they create.

So I believe they can do anything they want (make mod tools) and EA can't stop them since they (Respawn) owns the IP.

My bad... I thought they were owned by EA.

Anyway, I see in Google that Respawns first game is going to be a Sci Fi shooter due out in early 2013.. so lost my interest already. I can only stomach Sci Fi games for a few months... just like BF2142... got bored of it within 6 months.

Well, I don't think it's dying. I just think that whoever is still doing so makes modding still alive.

I guess for businesses, they just want profit. More profit, it's sickening. And yes, I do think games are boring now, I mentioned this several times.

It's ironic. With updated technologies, it would be better for modding but I guess because it's more complex nowadays, they don't want us to do so.

Regardless, I continue to map or mod for the games that do have modding support.