Cities: Skyline Developer Wants to Work with Modders

So, it’s been a few weeks now since the ‘defeat’ of the Steam Workshop, and things have settled down in the Modding community. Games that have enjoyed mods continue to do so, and mod creators, while unpaid, enjoy the laurels and good karma that comes with helping make a game more enjoyable and exciting for new fans and veterans alike.

But if you recall, one of the biggest problems people had with the Mod Workshop was—among other things—that paying for a Mod that is somehow invalidated by an official patch would be a waste of money, and the mod creator was under no obligation to update the mod to accommodate the new patch. It’s a problem that’s existed well before the workshop, and a problem the creators of the fantastic Cities: Skylines, Paradox Interactive, are keenly aware of, despite the fact their mods are, as we’ve come to expect, free.

A new free patch was released for the game today, and it has some pretty meaty additions to the game: tunnels, a must-have for any serious city builder, and over fifty European style buildings for players to erect. But, Paradox Interactive warns, an update like this will likely mess with your mods.
 

“Many mods and (some) custom assets will not work with 1.1.0 and will need updating by their author. We have worked hard to cause as few conflicts as possible with popular mods, yet this is a substantial update and with the code & functionality changes some issues have been impossible to avoid. Going forward we aim to find a solution where we can work with our core modders pre-launch to give them ample time to adjust their creations before the public have access.”

A patch interrupting a mod isn’t news, really, as that kind of stuff happens all the time. The news here is that Paradox Interactive has gone out of its way to point that out because it’s keenly aware of how much their game relies on mods and modders… unlike, say, some similar city-building sims that have been received less favorably by the community at large.  Plus, they want to work with modders--how cool is that?

So, let us celebrate our developer friends… and hope our modding friends fix their mods in a hurry. I want my European buildings AND my flight simulators, thank you!