There was a time when it seemed chatter about Valheim was ubiquitous such was its popularity and word-of-mouth hype. While that buzz may have died down somewhat since then, the survival and sandbox game retains a fervent playerbase and has attracted more players since it launched on Xbox in March.
But it’s on PC where the majority of its players can be found with the platform offering certain advantages, such as the ability to add mods, for example. This is where the Valheim devs have found it necessary to wade into this community with some comments about the modding scene and their availability. In a blog post entitled ‘Regarding Mods’ on Steam, the Iron Gate team addressed the topic after saying they had received many questions about it (via Eurogamer).
In short, Iron Gate wants mods for Valheim to remain free. While Valheim does not have official mod support the developer is happy to see that players are engaging with the game, but it is against modders who charge for their wares. “The thing that we’ve been getting the most questions about, however, is the phenomenon where mods cost money,” the blog post reads. “We definitely understand that you spend a lot of your time on creating a mod, and that you might want financial compensation for that, but Iron Gate does not condone locking modded content behind a paywall.”
“We feel that charging money for a mod is against the creative and open spirit of modding itself, and therefore we urge all mod authors to make their mods freely available to all who want to play them. This should include the whole mod, and not just have part of the mod available for free while another part of it costs money,” it continues.
However, Iron Gate is not against modders making money from their creations, saying: “If you want to show your appreciation for a mod author you can of course still support them with a voluntary donation,” but clarifying that it just doesn’t want to see money being exchanged for access to a mod. Currently, Valheim mods are available on mod sites such as Thunderstore and Nexus Mods as well as GitHub. The blog post also makes it clear that Iron Gate would prefer it if mods were labelled as unofficial both in game and on their mod sites in order to avoid confusion about when a player is playing a modded version or not.
Valheim launched in 2021 and became a hit after players enjoyed its atmosphere and building mechanics, with the title selling two million copies within two weeks of its release.