Reading:Nexus Mods kills its multiplatform mod manager in favour of its Windows-only Vortex app: ‘We were competing with ourselves instead of solving the actual problems’
Nexus Mods kills its multiplatform mod manager in favour of its Windows-only Vortex app: ‘We were competing with ourselves instead of solving the actual problems’
Nexus Mods—the biggest mod site on the planet and almost certainly the first place you went the last time you installed New Vegas—has put the kibosh on its plans for a multiplatform manager: the Nexus Mods App. Instead, it’s refocusing all its efforts on Vortex, its Windows-only mod manager that first hit alpha all the way back in 2018 (it’s fully out now, mind you).
Nexus announced the news on its site last week (via GamingOnLinux), writing that it has stopped making sense—if indeed it ever did—to divide its development efforts between two separate mod managers that aimed to do the same thing (uh, manage mods).
“Instead of moving forward together, we were splitting our focus. Every feature built twice. Every bug fixed in two places. Every conversation about ‘which one should I use’ was a reminder that we were competing with ourselves instead of solving the actual problems in front of us.” The short and the tall of it is that “We’re stopping development on the Nexus Mods App and focusing all our efforts on Vortex.”
Which, sure, makes sense. It is an odd move to develop two separate apps that try to do the exact same thing, but the death of the Nexus Mods App means the death of its multiplatform nature. When it first hit the scene last year, the pitch was very much that there’d be a mod manager you could get going on your Steam Deck or, if you were really cool, your Linux gaming desktop.
That’s a damn handy proposition. As someone who recently dived into Linux life, modding can sometimes be a hassle, if only because most mods are packaged (and their installation instructions are written) for Windows. If a mod wants to touch my %appdata% folder I’m hosed. What even is that? Fake Windows stuff, sounds like.
(Image credit: Nexus Mods)
My hope is that, perhaps, Nexus will integrate its learnings from the NMA into Vortex, eventually bringing that app over to other OSes later on down the line. If not? Well, then I’ll keep finding arcane ways to make Mod Organizer 2 run, I suppose.
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