The Top 5 Most Modded Games of All Time

[ZedClampet]

I got this from Infographic. I tried to follow their sources, but they were circular. I therefore cannot vouch for this list, and I know that it is missing one very modded game, so just consider this a starting point for discussion. It is, at least, more accurate than the several sites I saw that listed Skyrim as #1. They seemed to be just opinion lists.

5. Skyrim
4. Doom
3. Half-Life
2. GMOD
1. Minecraft

From what I found, Skyrim has 70,000 mods on Nexus and 28,000 mods (probably duplicates) on Steam Workshop. However, Planet Coaster has 399,939 mods on Steam Workshop. Curse Forge lists just over 100,000 Minecraft mods (the vast majority of which don't work on the current Minecraft edition), so I'm guessing that Planet Coaster is actually the most modded game of all time. But that's just a guess.

One cool note about this list is that 7 Half-Life mods became stand alone games. That's pretty impressive.

 

[Pifanjr]

Garry's mod has 1,761,873 add-ons on the workshop as of time of writing. Though I would argue that Garry's mod is not really a game, it's more like a game-maker.

Another important question is whether "most modded" and "most amount of entries on the workshop" means the same thing. Planet Coaster has a ton of entries on the workshop, but most of them seem to be models for a single building. I would say the size of the mods should be taken into account as well, but it's pretty much impossible to assign a value to the size of each mod.

 

[Konquerah]

Besides the general aesthetics of a game being modded, what's your purpose or need to mod a game? Everyone would obviously love a game to look more beautiful or authentic, but I have never understood the desire to change Batman's skin or add Thomas the Tank engine to Skyrim. There are though of course those useful mods, that allow for additional bag & storage space.

 

[ZedClampet]

Garry's mod has 1,761,873 add-ons on the workshop as of time of writing. Though I would argue that Garry's mod is not really a game, it's more like a game-maker.

Another important question is whether "most modded" and "most amount of entries on the workshop" means the same thing. Planet Coaster has a ton of entries on the workshop, but most of them seem to be models for a single building. I would say the size of the mods should be taken into account as well, but it's pretty much impossible to assign a value to the size of each mod.

You can't rule out mods based on size. For one thing, they are still mods, for another thing, you'd have to examine every mod for every game. Then you would have to make a judgment call. That would be difficult. Based on your wanting to reject single building mods in Planet Coaster, we would have to get rid of most Total War mods, as constructing buildings and creating the description files is much harder and more time consuming than the majority of Total War mods.

I would agree with you on GMOD. Otherwise we'd have to let Roblox in.

 

[Pifanjr]

Besides the general aesthetics of a game being modded, what's your purpose or need to mod a game?

Making it more fun/enjoyable. There's plenty of people who really enjoy adding ridiculous mods to their game.

Based on your wanting to reject single building mods in Planet Coaster

I didn't want to reject them, I just wouldn't consider them equal to something like, for example, a total conversion mod. But like you (and I) said, it's impossible to judge every mod for every game in order to compare them.

 

[ZedClampet]

Besides the general aesthetics of a game being modded, what's your purpose or need to mod a game? Everyone would obviously love a game to look more beautiful or authentic, but I have never understood the desire to change Batman's skin or add Thomas the Tank engine to Skyrim. There are though of course those useful mods, that allow for additional bag & storage space.

I basically mod just about all my games and even make mods on occasion.

I don't mod for aesthetics, nor do I add stuff like Thomas the Tank Engine.

You know how how many games, no matter how good, often have aspects you don't like? Chances are there's a mod for that. Also you can adjust game balance. But the best for me is when modders add new things and extend the life of the game.

 

[Brian Boru]

what's your purpose or need to mod a game?

♣ Make the game playable.
Civ4—I would've stopped playing after ~a year due to the tedium of the UI. The BAT/BUG/BULL mod means I still play it today, 18 years after launch.
Far Cry 5—I quit the game until the excellent Resistance mod got rid of the obnoxious involuntary and unavoidable capture sequences.

♦ Get rid of the dev's Hey-Mom-look-at-me stuff.
Mostly very boring launch and intro sequences in a lot of games.

♥ Customize replays.
If a game isn't too hot, drop it and move on. But if it's good, then it goes on my replay list, and it's worthwhile to shape it to my preferences.

♠ Extra levels or missions.

 

[ZedClampet]

But like you (and I) said,

Don't expect me to know what you said. I have only slept a couple of hours since Saturday morning, unless you count all the 2 second, spontaneous naps I've taken since opening this thread. Also, I'm currently at pain level 9, which makes it hard to concentrate.

 

[Pifanjr]

But the best for me is when modders add new things and extend the life of the game.

♠ Extra levels or missions.

I typically avoid mods that add extra missions/quests/areas and such because they often are too different from the main game. Like someone made a new game using the assets of the main game. What are your experiences with that?

Don't expect me to know what you said. I have only slept a couple of hours since Saturday morning, unless you count all the 2 second, spontaneous naps I've taken since opening this thread. Also, I'm currently at pain level 9, which makes it hard to concentrate.

I hope your condition improves soon.

 

[Brian Boru]

a new game using the assets of the main game. What are your experiences with that?

Haven't tried many of those, cos I didn't like the few I tried—like sci-fi remakes of Civ4.

♠ Extra levels or missions.

One of my quickie games is Picross Touch, which has ~40K player-made levels. Most of the few dozen so far have been fine. Also played loads of C&C player-made skirmish maps back in the day.

My main experience of extra missions and campaigns was with the C&C community. They made some fine stuff and didn't change the original gameplay.

 

[ZedClampet]

I typically avoid mods that add extra missions/quests/areas and such because they often are too different from the main game. Like someone made a new game using the assets of the main game. What are your experiences with that?


I hope your condition improves soon.

Thanks. I'm not sure about extra missions/areas because I rarely play those types of games and have never, to my memory, downloaded a mod that added missions/areas. But I know what you mean, and it's an occasional problem in the mods I download.

What I meant by extending the game is that...well, my brain is too addled right now to explain exactly, so I'll give examples. In Farming Simulator people have added a lot of new industries and also new equipment. New equipment in Farming Simulator is the equivalent of getting new units in Total War. It gives you a reason to play again, as do the new industries.

But, sort of to your point, these aren't perfect and are often ridiculously balanced, tending toward being way over-powered. In Farming Simulator industry terms, that means it costs very little and produces a lot of high value product. Money is basically what you are after in FS, so having a bunch of unbalanced industries in your game kind of ruins it. So that's why I always go through the mod files before I install them and make adjustments. I might just reduce the amount of product made, or I might change the price range you get when you sell.

When they aren't over-powered, the modder has usually hedged their bets too far in the opposite direction. In a lot of crafting games, they'll do this by making the recipes ridiculously difficult. That's not fun either.

 

[DXCHASE]

Besides the general aesthetics of a game being modded, what's your purpose or need to mod a game? Everyone would obviously love a game to look more beautiful or authentic, but I have never understood the desire to change Batman's skin or add Thomas the Tank engine to Skyrim. There are though of course those useful mods, that allow for additional bag & storage space.

Other than the above mentioned reasons for modding, mods remove unwanted software like denuvo 'anti-cheat' software. This softwares main purpose is so people cant pirate the game which i find wrong and people adding the ability to remove this software is great. But, its not just that, denuvo can make a game with this unncessary (imo) software run worse and hamper performance, mods can reverse this. There are examples where denuvo software makes games run considerably worse than they would without it. Ex. include Atomic Heart, Calisto Protocol, the new Dead Space etc...

Mods also add software that you may want to utilize in a game but the developer just simply omitted it. Case in point with Starfield, you cant play the game using DLSS (software frame-generation by nvidia) because Bethesda just omitted it but, thanks to mods, you can add it and enjoy better frames than you would without it. This is also true considering DLSS is a huge feature for nvidias 20xx, 30xx and 40xx series cards.


As for actually playing modded games...i dont dabble too much in it either. I might play a denuvo-removed game from time to time or play a "total-conversion" mod, but generally i just play the game vanilla. That doesnt mean i dont have a skyrim pack with 700+ mods ready to play if i wanted to lol.

 

[Zloth]

Some games don't even work without mods. Saints Row 2 and Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines jump to mind. You won't find many people who have gotten halfway through either of those games without modding the game. In that sense (% of players that mod the game), those could be the most modded games on PC.

 

[Johnway]

in no particular order:

Doom 2
Half life series
Quake series
Elderscrolls/fallout series (oblivion/ fallout 3 onwards)



Doom 2 pretty much survives because its modding community. Take it from someone who plays a lot of doom wads (currently bashing through elementalism) some of the stuff that comes out is briliant.

halflife modding has given us some quality mods. The most famous probably being counterstrike

Quake series is also fairly well recieved when it come to modding etc oddles of maps, skins and total conversions. Gave rise to a couple of famous works.

Elderscrolls/fallout series is obvious as to the amount of content. From bug/ui fixes to entirely no content.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I wonder if this survey included things like custom skins, content, etc for The Sims and such? Seems unlikely.