If you're a Baldur's Gate 3 modder who's been frustrated with having to uninstall, reinstall, update, and re-juggle your mods every time a new patch is released, fear not: it sounds like developer Larian Studios has your back, and official mod support is on its way.
We generally don’t talk about things til they’re ready, but as you may have read, we’re making an exception. We’ve been working on a robust, cross-platform plan for mod support to be released later in year. We love our modding community and we want to support them. It’s coming. https://t.co/54GsxNshlQ
— Very AFK (@Cromwelp) February 22, 2024
A tweet from Larian Studios director of publishing Michael Douse acknowledges that patches such as the most recent Hotfix #19 frequently break installed mods and force users to wait for updates, uninstall, or otherwise play without desired mods for a time in order to run the most recent version of the game. However, he adds that the team has "been working on a robust, cross-platform plan for mod support to be released later in year."
"We have a system but it needs to be tested and still requires work," reads a follow-up tweet. "We’re excited about it. I understand that it suck’s when the game is updated and mods break. Our community teams will start talking with and looping in modding community. For now, work continues :)"
More information was provided in a post from Larian senior community strategist WombatMedic on Discord. In a lengthy post, Wombat similarly acknowledged the player experience of patches being incompatible with popular mods, and spoke further on the company's plans to move toward official support in the future:
We are working on official mod support, and have been for a while. We want the very best for you, which includes establishing a pipeline that lets mod authors release their mods across different platforms. Together with the platform holders, we are working on making this a reality, and are forming a team to support mod curation. We’re aiming to offer modding support for things like classes, UI, customisation, spells, and certain assets and game mechanics. As this is no small task, we hope to introduce the initial stages of modding support in our next big patch, which is still several months away. Frustrated as you might be now, we’re keen to work with you on this - and have plans to reach out to popular mod authors to talk further and work together to avoid issues in the future.
Despite the current lack of official support, Baldur's Gate 3 players are using mods for all kinds of things, such as adding new spells, character races and backgrounds, UI adjustments, carrying more items, new character customization features, control and camera tweaks, removing the party size limit, giving Astarion a gun, and tons of other things. It's good news that Larian is actively working on ensuring all those mods and more will be compatible with future updates, especially given a long Larian community history of actively and ambitiously modding its past games, like Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. And the possibility of console support in particular is an incredible touch.
We at IGN love Baldur's Gate 3 with or without mods, giving it a coveted 10/10 at launch for its "crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity."
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
