[2020] Mod Support and Details for the Epic Game Store

Hey all,

We wanted to take a moment to fill you in on how mods will work on Epic Game Store (EGS). On Steam we rely on the built-in mod-downloader to handle any issues with mod mismatches between the client and server. On EGS we can not do this due to the fact that they do not have a Steam workshop equivalent. At launch we will support the following:

1. Players can download the mods from a third party location and place them in the Mods folder. After that they can use the Mod Menu in game to manually order/activate their mods, or connect to a server and have the Mod Mismatch system update their modlist automatically.

2. Players can directly download mods from a dedicated server. When we launch on EGS clients will be able to download mods using the Mod Mismatch GUI. In order to do this the dedicated server must have port gameport+10 (TCP) open. The default would be 7787.

When Epic adds official mod support to EGS we plan to make changes so that the Mod Dev Kit and the Client treat it the same as Steam Workshop.

The biggest issue with option 1 is that the vast majority of mods are on Steam Workshop which will not be available to all players using EGS. There are ways around this (Steamworkshop mod downloaders, putting mods on a different site like Nexus /moddb / etc).

Option 2 also has some issues. Several of our most popular mods are rather large so downloading those with a poor connection will not be a good experience. GPortal servers have all ports open, but other providers or privately hosted servers will not open the ports required.

We will continue to work on the problems above and try to get everything sorted as soon as we can.

For Server admins:

EGS customers that have a different modlist can download mods directly from your dedicated server. If you have concerns over bandwidth usage, latency caused by this feature, or just don’t want to allow people to download mods from your server you can restrict/modify access by doing the following:

Option #1:
Modify the amount of people that can download from the server at one time:

1. Edit /…/Conan Exiles Dedicated Server\ConanSandbox\Saved\Config\WindowsServer\Engine.ini

2. Add the following:
   [/Script/ConanSandbox.SystemSettings]
   ModFileDownload.MaxSimultaneousClientConnections=5

The default value is 5, this variable sets the max amount of users that can download mods from the server at the same time. Set to 0 to disable feature.

Option #2:
Close the port that is used to download mods. This is your gameport (default is 7777) +10. So for a default setup you would make sure that TCP port 7787 is not exposed.
If you want to make sure that people CAN download mods from your server, please make sure tcp port gameport +10 is open.

How to use a server whitelist for EGS customers:

whitelist.txt will accept SteamIDs or EOS Account IDs. For EGS customers you can find your EOS Account ID in the ACCOUNT INFO section here:
https://www.epicgames.com/account/personal?am=1

How to run a dedicated server using EGS:
The dedicated server is included in your install directory. From the root install path go to \ConanExiles\WindowsServer and run ConanSandboxServer.exe to launch a dedicated server.