Mods are being ruined by one unsettling trend

As you may have already noticed, we like to cover mods quite a lot here at GAMINGbible which are a bit of a love-it or hate-it feature within the PC community.

However, mods and the modding community as a whole has changed a lot in recent years with mods sometimes making the difference between the latest release being playable or not.

Not only that, but with this content being mostly free to download and offering heaps of new content to your favourite games, it only makes sense to celebrate the talented creators behind them.

However, that doesn’t mean that mods are not both a blessing and a curse.

I suppose we should start with the good before we go onto the bad, which is the whole reason that I was inspired to write this story.

Released back in December, Marvel Rivals is the latest PvP hero shooter on the market and as you can probably guess from its title, features many different characters from across the Marvel Universe.

NetEase

However, within a week of its launch, NexusMods was beginning to fill to the brim with various different mods which did mainly focus on cosmetics to begin with.

Some were questionable, such as the ability to make Psylocke completely naked or give Venom that nineteen-inches we all hear about, whilst others offered more lore-accurate skins which Marvel fans would definitely appreciate.

What was most impressive, however, was the mod which improved Marvel Rivals’ frankly abysmal fps.

I have already written about how Marvel Rivals has succeeded where many others in the genre have failed but one thing it does struggle with is major fps issues which often make the game a whole lot harder thanks to players having to navigate PowerPoint presentations as well as the Hulk’s stray fists.

The FPS Performance Enhancer does exactly what it says on the tin in lieu of NetEase not finding a fix for the ongoing issues and is proof, once again, that players really are the backbone of the gaming world.

There are many examples of modders saving the day when it comes to game optimisation by offering free fixes and even graphical enhancements to make the game look better than ever whilst staying true to what the developers intended.

Another pro for the modding community is their ability to keep otherwise dead games alive.

As much as we love modern-day classics such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption 2, there is no denying that, as single-player games, official content for them has run pretty scarce.

However, thanks to modders, these games are still very much alive with new quests, storylines and locations added to modding websites on a daily basis.

At the time of writing this, 30 mods have been added to Nexus Mods for Red Dead Redemption 2 this week and Skyrim follows suit with 20.

Rockstar Games

A newer title like Cyberpunk 2077, for example, has received over 100 mods over the past seven days and shows no signs of slowing down.

Despite this, modding still has something of a negative connotation and one reason for that may be due to an issue I stumbled across recently.

I should begin by saying that this is not a new problem and also not something that I expect to see prevented anytime soon but regardless of this, it is still a topic close to my heart.

Released last year and easily becoming my 2024 game of the year, the Silent Hill 2 Remake cemented itself as one of the most successful remakes of all time.

The new-and-improved version of the 2001 survival horror still managed to retain its inspirations from authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and directors such as the late David Lynch but the Silent Hill 2 Remake was testament to how far we have come with modern technology.

No longer was James Sunderland made up of approximately two pixels, and fans both old and new flocked to the remake to see the mystical town of Silent Hill in all its 4K glory.

As with any new release, modders soon got to work and alongside optimisation improvements, cosmetics based on original skins and some quality-of-life mods, some disrespectful mods still slipped through after some “fans” complained about Angela’s new look.

For those who have played Silent Hill 2, you will know that Angela is a teenage girl that James stumbles across in Silent Hill.

At first, it is unclear why she has also been drawn to the town but players soon discover that her childhood consisted of sexual abuse at the hands of her father and as a result, her trauma has manifested as a burning inferno within the walls of Silent Hill.

In the remake, Angela is presented as a normal teenage girl in terms of appearance but it wasn’t long before basement-dwellers took to Twitter to slate her looks and call for mods to make her appear more “attractive”.

As a result, some creators worked on mods which aimed to make changes to Angela’s appearance, including slimming her face, plumping her lips and even increasing her bust size and outfit.

Bloober Team

One mod aimed at “fixing” Angela’s appearance currently has over 22,000 downloads, and although I won’t link it here, it is disheartening to say the least.

As mentioned, Angela is the victim of sexual abuse and a victim of the men in her life and yet these mods aim to sexualise a teenage girl for no reason other than to cater to pornography-addled brains.

If it wasn’t already obvious from this piece, I am always a big supporter of mods and the modding community as a whole but in an era where women’s autonomy is in jeopardy, Deepfake porn is on the rise and we are seemingly regressing when it comes to the sexualism of female video game characters, mods that aim to sexualise victims of abuse (and teenage ones at that) do not sit well with me.

That being said, a few questionable mods are not testament to the hard work that goes into creating the thousands of others that not only improve a player’s experience but also give them reasons to return to their favourite games.

So if you want some extra content, don’t be afraid to check out some popular mods. Just be prepared to sometimes see a lot more than what you bargained for.