Donation Points FAQ

What are Donation Points?

Donation Points (shortened to "DP") are the local currency of Nexus Mods that mod authors can accumulate, through unique file page downloads, that can then be redeemed for rewards through our storefront, donated to charity, or shared with other users.

How much is each Donation Point worth?

Each Donation Point is worth $0.001, so 1000 DP is worth $1.

Where do Donation Points come from?

The source of all Donation Points is Nexus Mods itself.

Each month Nexus Mods will donate, from its own money reserves, into a central pool that is then used to generate new DP that is added into the system and shared amongst mod authors who have opted in to the Donation Points system. The pool is supplemented by our Mod Author Donation Fund on Patreon.

At the end of every month, the money Nexus Mods has decided to donate into the Donation Points pool will be converted into its DP equivalent. For example, a total donation money pool of $100,000 is the equivalent of 100,000,000 DP.

A script will then calculate the amount of Donation Points earned across all mods the author has published and receives a split from. The metrics used to calculate how Donation Points are assigned is not public information.

From this page, you can now search for the mod(s) you would like to opt-in and do so by clicking the link in the "Actions" column on the right labelled "Opt-In".

On the Opt-In Confirmation screen, you can choose to split the revenue from the mod with other users by typing in their username, and/or with one of five different charities. You can adjust the percentage you want to distribute to each user/charity via the sliders below. Once you're done, click "Save" in the bottom left to confirm your settings.

Why does the contribution Nexus Mods makes to the total donation pool change from month to month?

We cannot commit to an official figure each month as our financial situation and financial needs change from month to month. We need to be flexible on what we can contribute as our monetary situation can change from month to month. You can see our recent contributions per month.

Why do you not tell us what metrics are used to allocate Donation points?

As we're sure you can understand this issue is complicated and can create the potential for a lot of drama in the community. Whatever system we use has to be reasonable and most of all, devoid of subjective human opinions as much as possible. That basically means that there should be no one person or group of people in charge of who receives Donation Points.

Previously, we used Unique Downloads to determine DP rewards. Unfortunately, this rewarded certain ways of publishing mods which were not user-friendly and not good for the modding ecosystem.

We now feel that any system where the metrics are public will be abusable in some way and so we will not be sharing how we determine DP allocation.

Instead of public metrics, we have made clear guidelines on what we do not wish to incentivise.

What are the new DP metrics disincentivising?

The new metrics are being used to prevent fraud and abuse of the system, here are the behaviours we are disincentivising. 

• Prevent the use of botnets to “farm” Donation Points
• Mod Splitting: Splitting a mod across multiple mod pages in an attempt to generate additional DP
• Update Spam: Chain releases of minor updates for mods as separate mod pages in an attempt to generate additional DP
• Mod list “stuffing”: Including multiple small mods with either full or partial DP splits in a Collection. E.g. patches made for the Collection posted across multiple mod pages.This applies to third party modlist installers
• Inclusion of mods within Collections in exchange for a share of earned Donation Points from the mod author, i.e. "quid pro quo". This applies to third party modlist installers