The Steam Workshop is awful, and it really drives me batty that so many people are obsessed with having it.
Here's an old post of mine covering my thoughts:
Originally posted by Shurenai: -Snip: Initial comment towards a quoted user removed; it's referenced later but you can overlook that line-
Steam Workshop is Awful. It has so many downsides, and very few upsides.
- It's incredibly limiting; You're not allowed to include certain filetypes(arguably for good reason- Really though, it's just because steam doesn't want to pay for the screening such file types would need.)- This straight up limits the potential complexity of a mod. You most likely won't see a mod like Darkness Falls on the workshop for example- It changes and adds too much, likely using filetypes that would be disallowed.
- It has zero version control- You can't opt to stay on an older version of a mod because it's new version does things you don't like. You also can't opt into an older version of a mod if you prefer to play on an older version of the game. You also can't NOT update a mod to stay compatible with a server, you have zero version control. When the mod creator updates, you're forced to update.
- A mod uploader can just up and remove their mod at any time, and that automatically removes it from your installation too.
- For multiplayer games it complicates things- Running games and servers CANT update; Which means if any single mod on a server updates, players who were forced thanks to zero version control can no longer connect to the server until the server shuts down, lets its mods update, and relaunches.
- No mod load order; Meaning it's more difficult to prevent or correct mod conflicts.
- Version compatibility- Workshop filtering is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful; It's often difficult to find and ensure any given mod works with the current version of the game, there's often 2, 3, 4, 5+ copies of a mod on the workshop for different versions of the game and usually with no particular indication of which goes to which. It relies on the uploader to properly tag their mods using the limited tag options.
- And so many other things.
As for upsides it has precisely two, as far as I'm concerned
1: Installation is (mostly) fool proof. Click subscribe, Launch game.
And
2: You're downloading the mods from an allegedly "trusted source"(Put in quotes because of my initial questions above. Do you REALLY trust Steam? If so, Why?), So Most* of the time, there's no issues.
*Steam itself isn't perfect; Some games with workshop allow you to ship .dll files which is always a potential threat. That said, I've never heard of any major issues personally.
And both of those "benefits" fall utterly flat in the face of the modding community.
1: Mod installation even without a workshop is for many games pretty damn fool proof. 7DTD in particular is just drag and drop- Download the file, put the file in the mods folder, and in most cases you're done. It's not hard. And even then, most games also have some kind of modloader to simplify it even further. Just like 7DTD does.
and
2: The major mod repositories are, typically speaking, all also "trusted sources". Nexus Mods for example afaik has never had any major scandals. It's not perfect; There's some people that don't like them and their decisions.. But they're very careful with their files- They have to be, or the modding scene becomes dangerous and they can't flourish. Same with Github- It's the single largest coding host on the planet, with over 100 million developers and 370+ million unique repositories. They're not going to just let any old script kiddie make them look bad with ransomware downloads.
So the two biggest 'boons' of the steam workshop aren't really benefits to begin with. So it's just a bunch of losses.
TL;DR: The existing modding support is already amazing- The only thing workshop will bring is a bunch of headaches and problems all in the name of 'convenience' that isn't even really that convenient.
devtrackers.gg