Modders deserve recognition at The Game Awards, too

To me, mods represent some of the best work happening in video games. I don’t just say this because these additions have allowed me to introduce anime boys to Stardew Valley or put Margaret Thatcher’s grave in Skyrim, but because modding has become a central part of gaming culture and development. 

In some cases, these fan-made add-ons can make a game playable or introduce vital quality-of-life fixes for major AAA titles. Other times, a mod can change a game so that its romance system, gender markers, or character design options are more inclusive. If you can imagine a change in a game, it’s possible a mod could bring it to life. Modders — who are developers in their own right — have worked on games like Stardew Valley’s 1.6 update and Starfield. So why don’t they get their due at The Game Awards? 

Fan-made work — which modding falls into — used to have an award category at The Game Awards. Called “Best Fan Creation,” this accolade ran from 2014 to 2016. Why does it no longer exist? Polygon reached out to Game Awards creator and host Geoff Keighley and we have yet to hear back from him, but here’s what we do know: Keighley ran into some trouble the final year the award ran. 

In 2016, Keighley announced the nominations for “Best Fan Creation,” and they included two projects that used Nintendo IP: a Metroid fan project called AM2R and Pokémon Uranium. Initially, fans celebrated the inclusion of these ambitious fan-run projects. However, in the end, Keighley cut both nominations from the final show without giving any comment as to why. Since then, there has been no similar category.

Polygon reached out to Nintendo for comment and will update this story when we hear back. 

The idea that Nintendo intimidated Keighley out of celebrating fan creations isn’t entirely out of the question. The renowned Japanese developer and publisher has cultivated a reputation of being extremely litigious when it comes to fan-made projects and mods of its games. Nintendo’s legal team has issued widespread DMCA takedowns on modding sites and has even taken action against YouTubers who use modded Nintendo games in streams. Looking back, the idea that leadership at Nintendo would let an award show platform fan work does seem almost laughable. 

But now we’re left with the current unfortunate circumstances. The Game Awards now excludes all the stellar — and completely legal — work that’s happening in the larger game modding scene. Today, we have to make do with the nebulous category of “Best Community Support,” which appears to focus on the community managers of teams rather than the fan communities themselves.

There are plenty of developers and publishers that do support modding. Bethesda Softworks doesn’t just approve the use of mods in its games, but has even attempted to monetize modders’ work with the Creation Club. Modding often plays such a central role in the legacy of Bethesda’s games that it’s a running joke within the community that the developers may release rougher games with the understanding that modders will go and fix all the main problems themselves.  

Bethesda isn’t alone in its support for modding. In the case of Baldur’s Gate 3 — which won the coveted Game of the Year Award in 2023 — the team at Larian Studios updated the game so that it’s as easy to edit and add new content as possible. With Stardew Valley, creator Eric Barone has not only worked to make the game as amenable as possible to modding, but hired some of these creators as developers on his team for later updates.

While it might be difficult to navigate which kinds of modding work are or aren’t OK to recognize on a national platform, I think it’ll only get harder for Keighley to ignore the fan-made parts of the game development sphere. The initial buzz of the “metaverse” might sound like a dull hum two years after tech CEOs and game developers popularized the term, but user-generated content continues to play a major role in the larger gaming industry. This year, Epic Games tinkered with fan-made Fall Guys maps, and Roblox’s Dress to Impress — while not a fan game — was made for the YouTube-like platform and became a viral hit that brought new audiences to Roblox. 

User-generated content is pretty trendy right now, but there is also a practical reason to recognize modders: It’s hard work. 

This year, Barone released the most modder-friendly version of Stardew Valley, and what I witnessed of its modding community was nothing short of incredible. I spoke to people who distributed and shared detailed documentation, teachers who could mentor new developers, and community members who managed Discord servers with hundreds of active users.

To me, these kinds of efforts genuinely encapsulate some of the best and brightest work happening in games — something that Keighley seems to be all about. So while I understand why an award category like “Best Legally Sanctioned Fan Made Creation” might be a bit wordy, it would definitely be worth it to give these creators the recognition they deserve.