Donation Options & Guidelines

Content creators (mod authors, tool creators, etc) are the lifeblood of our community. To that end, we are happy to offer and support various methods for our users to donate to creators and show support for their efforts. We firmly believe that modding should be a pursuit of passion first and foremost with financial compensation being a nice bonus, but not the main driver of creating content.

At Nexus Mods, our mission is to "Make Modding Easy" and we strongly believe that paid modding is in direct conflict with that goal. Modding games is already a complicated process and forcing users to navigate a confusing split of free and paid mods to get their setup working does not represent an easy, accessible and positive modding community.

In the vast majority of cases, direct monetisation of mod content violates the EULAs that players agree to when playing games or using modding tools. This means that paid modding can result in legal issues not only for the modder charging for their work but also for any platform facilitating that behaviour.

We are committed to building a positive modding community where all content is freely available.

Built-In Donation Options

We offer several methods for content creators to earn rewards or receive donations for their contributions to the community. Participation in these systems is, of course, completely voluntary.

PayPal Donations

Users can add their PayPal email address to their account in their donation settings. The options here allow a direct donation button to be displayed on the user's profile or mod pages. For additional control, the donate button can be enabled or disabled on a per-page basis in the Permissions section of the mod page settings. 

Donation Points and Mod Author Rewards

As part of our commitment to content creators, we offer two reward systems that mod authors can choose to take advantage of:

• Donation Points: This system rewards mod authors with virtual Donation Points based on several factors including the popularity of their mods. This system is opt-in for each mod page. You can read more about Donation Points here.
• Free Premium for Mod Authors: Mod authors are given free access to the Premium features of our website from 3,000 unique downloads across all their mods. This scales up to a Lifetime Premium membership at 30,000. You can read more about Free Premium for Mod Authors here. 

Linking to external donation options

In addition to the options above, we allow mod authors to customise their mod pages, profile pages and collection pages to include links to their preferred off-site donation options (e.g. Patreon, Ko-Fi, Boosty, etc). We reserve the right to make edits to comments, posts and file descriptions at our discretion should users be found to act in violation of our Anti-Solicitation Policy. Administrative action may follow in cases where we deem it necessary.

Anti-Solicitation Policy

Nexus Mods explicitly prohibits the direct monetization of mods for the reasons explained at the start of this article. We support donations but modders are not allowed to charge for their mods or offer any files, updates, or modding-related services in exchange for money. Requesting or offering donations in exchange for any content or service will be considered solicitation and is therefore strictly prohibited. 

Donations should only ever be offered as a way of thanking other users for their contributions to our community. In general, to avoid solicitation we recommend following these guidelines:

• Do not solicit or request donations in exchange for files, updates, or assistance.
• Do not request "commissions" where a mod will be created in exchange for payment. 
• Do not overtly or covertly hint at the possibility of further development of your files in exchange for donations.
• Do not attempt to advertise the donation options exaggeratedly or otherwise include excessive usage of donation reminders in your files and/or file page descriptions.
• Do not offer donations in exchange for files, updates, or assistance.
• Do not link to external sites/communities where monetisation of mods or modding-related assistance is discussed. This includes both direct links (e.g. Patreon) and indirect links (e.g. a Discord server promoting paid content on Patreon) 
• Do not offer early/beta access to files/services in exchange for donations.

The next sections include specific cases involving paid modding content and our policies surrounding them.

Publisher-Endorsed Paid Modding Rules

Following the trend of recent schemes/programs that enable the monetisation of user-generated content (mods) through channels approved by the game developers we feel that this needs an explicit policy surrounding them. Examples of these programs include:

• Bethesda's Verified Creators Program (Skyrim Special Edition, Starfield, Fallout 4)
• InZoi Creations Marketplace

Our policy around linking to this kind of content can be summarised with the following guidelines:

• Linking to your own paid content: If the uploader has free content on Nexus Mods and would like to link to the place to purchase their paid content, we will allow it subject to the advertising limitations.
• Lite/Trial/Preview/Demo versions of paid mods: We will not allow free mods to be shared where they represent an inferior version of the mod with features stripped out to promote the purchase of the full version. 
• Patches for/Dependencies on Paid Mods: We allow patches that fix compatibility issues between your mod on Nexus Mods and a paid mod on an official provider as long as (1) the patch is included as part of your main mod file OR the patch is added as an "Optional file" on your mod page and (2) the paid mod is not a requirement of your mod to work. We do not allow patches for paid mods to be uploaded to "patch hub" mod pages or "standalone patch pages" on Nexus Mods. These should be uploaded to the paid modding provider's platform. For more information on this policy, please check this article. 
• Mod lists requiring paid mods: Similar to mods, if any mod list is not functional without the user purchasing paid mods, they will not be permitted. 
• Backlinks are required: If a mod author wants to link from their free content on Nexus Mods to their paid content, the paid content must include a link back to their Nexus Mods profile. 

Failure to adhere to these rules will result in moderation action, where we deem it necessary. 

Advertising Limitations 

When posting a link from Nexus Mods to a developer-authorised source of paid user-generated content the link must adhere to the following requirements:

• The link must be at the bottom of the mod description or "About Me" page.
• The link must not be the only item in the mod description, proper documentation for the mod must be provided above the banner. For the "About Me" pages, this is not a concern.
• The link must be no larger than 100px in height including any images and text.
• The text associated with the message must not be an aggressive call to action to buy content and simply inform users of the paid content available. e.g. "Check out my paid Creations on Bethesda.net" not "Buy my best mods here!".
• Mod page sticky posts should contain a maximum of one mention of the paid mods and occupy no more than 100px. 
• When replying to users, your comments must not excessively refer to or advertise the paid content you have available. (e.g. "Do x to make the mod work. Also, check out my paid version here")

Backlink format

The author must include a link from their paid content back to their Nexus Mods profile page. This should be similar in size/prominence to the link to the paid creation on Nexus Mods:

• If the paid mod website supports images, we recommend using a banner to showcase your content in the best light.
• If the paid mod section does not support embedded images, text in the following format can be used: "See more of my free mods on my Nexus Mods profile: {link here}"

Other Paid Mods

Links to mods that require payment from any source other than a Publisher-Endorsed Paid Mod program are strictly prohibited. This includes:

• Mods that require payment to unlock via Patreon/Boosty/Ko-Fi/etc.
• Restricting access to beta/early access builds to paying supporters.
• Offering to create specific mods for users in exchange for payment (i.e. commissions). 

There are legal ramifications for Nexus Mods if we allow links to such content on our website. We also believe this sort of monetisation is ultimately bad for the modding community as a whole because it incentivises withholding the best content (for example, significant updates) while keeping a Nexus Mods page to advertise the paywalled content. 

If the monetisation of modding gets out of hand, there is the concern that developers, or more likely their legal teams, may start cracking down on mod authors, us, and modding in general.