Free Premium for Mod Authors
Free Premium for Mod Authors is an initiative to reward Mod Authors for their efforts with free Premium Membership time in a more inclusive way. It is designed to reward various milestones of total Unique Downloads across all mods with free Premium time in the form of redeemable rewards. There is no need to opt in or out of this.
How it works
The system will run a check once a day to count Unique Downloads for every Mod Author across the site. When a Mod Author's Unique Downloads across all their mods (including historically Hidden, Archived or Deleted mods) pass certain milestones, they will be given the following Premium Membership rewards for free:
- 1,000 UDL: Free Supporter Membership and Access to Mod Author Discord Servers/Nexus Mods Forum
- 3,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 6,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 9,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 12,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 15,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 18,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 21,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 24,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 27,000 UDL: Free 1 Month Premium Membership
- 30,000 UDL: Lifetime Premium Membership
The rewards apply to all mods and will be issued retroactively to any mods uploaded before the scheme began in early 2024. These rewards are non-transferable.
Your rewards will be redeemable on your billing page. The rewards can only be redeemed when your account has no active Premium membership or subscription. This includes when you had a previously redeemed reward.
You will be sent a notification and an e-mail every time you have earned a reward. In addition, a Unique Download count will be added to the user profile to allow mod authors to track how close they are to rewards. You can see this count on your user profile.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: What if I have already met the criteria before the change went live?
As soon as the system went live, your account will have received the correct rewards for your Unique Download count unless you already have a Lifetime Premium membership.
Q: What if I don't want to redeem my Free Premium rewards straight away?
Fear not, once you have your rewards, you have them forever and you will never lose them unless you use them or you lose access to your account.
Q: What happens to my account when the free Premium time expires?
Your account will revert to being a ‘Supporter’ account. Of course, you will still retain Mod Author status on our Discord servers. However, you will need to reach the next milestone to receive another month of Free Premium.
Q: What if I already have a Premium membership that I purchased or redeemed on the legacy system?
All subscription plans will not be cancelled and will need to be cancelled manually on your billing page. If you have an active membership, this will need to expire before you can redeem a reward. In addition, refunds will not automatically be issued for any accounts that receive Free Premium and you will have to request a refund via support@nexusmods.com which will be subject to our refund policy. This does not apply to Premium memberships acquired using Donation points.
Q: What if I am a team member on a Mod but not the uploader?
Rewards are only earned for the mod uploader. We are aware that some mods are created by teams of modders but do not currently have any plans to split the rewards among multiple users. Rewards for team members may be explored in future updates to the website. In the meantime, you can arrange your Donation Points split between team members so that they can request a payout to purchase Premium.
Q: I have an old deleted mod which should get me rewards but why haven't I received anything?
We only started retaining the statistical data for deleted mods around 2018 so if your mod is older than this then we do not have the data to generate a reward. Alternatively, if your mod was removed by a moderator or admin, its stats will not be counted towards rewards.