ZenRowe

Greetings Survivors!
Zen Rowe here again, and I have brought you another peek into the lives of the modders!

Today we’re going to be talking to LeutianKane!

Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your sponsored project.

I know a lot of people love these types of mods, they can make gameplay feel refreshing and new again. You've been working on this project for quite a while right? How did you get started on it?

That's actually a really interesting thing to see. Mods don't often change hands, for various reasons. Was this your first mod, or have you worked on other projects before this one?

So you had some experience before starting on the project.
I want to switch focus for a moment here and talk a bit more about yourself. Outside of modding do you have other development experience? Does your background benefit...

Greetings Survivors!
Zen Rowe here again, and I have brought you another peek into the lives of the modders!

Today we’re going to be talking to LeutianKane!

Why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your sponsored project.

I know a lot of people love these types of mods, they can make gameplay feel refreshing and new again. You've been working on this project for quite a while right? How did you get started on it?

That's actually a really interesting thing to see. Mods don't often change hands, for various reasons. Was this your first mod, or have you worked on other projects before this one?

So you had some experience before starting on the project.
I want to switch focus for a moment here and talk a bit more about yourself. Outside of modding do you have other development experience? Does your background benefit...

Greetings Survivors! Zen Rowe here again, back for another spotlight on our glorious modding community.

Today we’re going to be talking to Kiwiboys!

Who are you and what do you do?

That's a pretty intense modification. ARK itself doesn't really have much in the way of existing mechanics for you to tie into for that kind of system, right?

Making mods can definitely be an exercise in creative solutions. May I ask about your background? Does your education or personal experience tie in well with helping you design the overall system or influence the direction of your solutions to problems?

Shhhhh. Don't let Epic hear you!
We'll talk a bit more about ARK settlements in a moment, but I do want to focus on you a bit. When we make our mods we tend to focus ourselves entirely on that and most of the people who enjoy our creations don't kno...

Greetings Survivors! Zen Rowe here again, back for another spotlight on our glorious modding community.

Today we’re going to be talking to Kiwiboys!

Who are you and what do you do?

That's a pretty intense modification. ARK itself doesn't really have much in the way of existing mechanics for you to tie into for that kind of system, right?

Making mods can definitely be an exercise in creative solutions. May I ask about your background? Does your education or personal experience tie in well with helping you design the overall system or influence the direction of your solutions to problems?

Shhhhh. Don't let Epic hear you!
We'll talk a bit more about ARK settlements in a moment, but I do want to focus on you a bit. When we make our mods we tend to focus ourselves entirely on that and most of the people who enjoy our creations don't kno...

We have already implemented as much of S+ as we are going to. There is a short pickup timer when placing structures to allow for correction of accidental placement, but a persistent option to pick up any structure at any time is not something we plan to implement in the official game. It's far too easily exploitable and under normal playing conditions packing up a huge base and moving it to the other side of the map or another server should not be easy in my opinion.
If you are on single player or a private server I believe there is an override setting you can use to make that option stay,

oh, it's no secret. It's the HLN-A skin that comes as bonus of the genesis season pass. Why that is restricted, I'm sure is easy to guess.
This is all a bit off topic now though, I just wanted to clarify something to prevent any misunderstanding about content restrictions.

They can use assets from the maps, they just have to make their own map itself.
The "command spawnable" test was aimed primarily at items, creatures, structures, etc. (There is one item that is restricted, but it's also not spawnable). It's not a strict rule, just a good test to see if it's something the studio might take issue with. If something is explicitly made non-spawnable where it normally would be, it's probably under restriction.

The cost to buy the mods from authors and convert them to official is not even remotely close to the perpetual cost of supporting an open platform for mods on consoles.
perpetual expanding storage costs, development costs and time for infrastructure (Remember the consoles provide nothing for mod distribution), labor costs for curation in perpetuity, etc.
It means permanently devoting resources to managing it as well which means fewer hands working on our actual content.
All of these things add up to staggering costs.
That is assuming all logistics hurdles were overcome and nothing prev

I think you missed the point of the information.
But sure, if you want to be reductive, yeah we choose not to put mods on console that way... currently. Who knows what the future may hold.
For now we do it via purchasing the mods directly from the authors, polishing them up a little further and making them official content.
But we definitely don't have the kind of resources or the staff size Bethesda can afford to throw around. Comparing us to Bethesda is flattering (I guess?) but unrealistic.

When only 3 companies have done it across the entire history of home game consoles, that's a pretty glaring indicator that it is in fact not "with ease".
If you are about to reference something said by Todd Howard about it, you should know better by now. ?
Bethesda generally has the resources to brute force their way through just about any roadblock that they want without having to worry much about the consequences if it flops (and they have made many catastrophic missteps when it comes to their modding community).

Not only that but on PC modding communities have historical

It's a good question. In practice I've never gone far enough down this particular part of the rabbit hole to be able to find out if they have specific rules for such a thing. I know it's possible, but to my knowledge the console manufacturers provide no support for this, and setting up a distribution system like that even on PC isn't a trivial thing to do. I imagine consoles will also have extra rules regarding security and transfer methods as well.

Consoles are not forgotten, but there is a lot more to it than just flipping a switch.
I understand the desire to want mods on console platforms, I really do. I'm going to talk about some of the hurdles. This is just general information for you to think about, not just for when vying for console mods for ARK, but any game. These are hurdles that every developer that wants to put mods on consoles will have to come up with an answer for and for some studios they just aren't worth the perpetual cost.
platform requirements: Publishing anything on a console comes with following strict rules a