2024 - Year in Review

A year of growth

Thanks to the 260+ games using mod.io, and the 281,000 creators who submitted content in 2024, we’re proud to have finished with our biggest year so far at mod.io. We experienced significant growth on all our key metrics, led by an upswing of accessibility and adoption of UGC overall, and some major releases using our services.

Across the year we achieved +40% growth in all key metrics, with much of this occurring in Q3 and Q4 following a number of major game launches. In December ’24 we smashed all of our pre-existing records, with downloads reaching 76.3M (+100% vs. Dec.‘23), and MAU reaching 20.3M (+61% vs. Dec.‘23). You can continue to track our metrics live via our new status page.

Cross-platform modding trajectory

While PC remains the de facto platform for modding, 18 of the 44 new games going live with mod.io this year were on console and VR. Collectively non-PC players accounted for over 65% of all our downloads in 2024. We highly value making the enjoyment of mods available to all consumers, so it is extremely motivating to have players and press cite the work we’ve done with other studios, as a feature they’d like to see replicated in their favorite games.

As a result of the increasing awareness, when comparing with studios launching in-house solutions or using other vendors, mod.io accounted for 64% market share of official mod support launches on console and VR. On PC the story is different, with Steam Workshop accounting for 85% market share of official integrated mod support launches, mod.io accounting for 10%, in-house and other vendors making up the remaining 5%. We’re seeing this gap steadily narrowing as more studios push for open, cross-platform solutions to enable their games to reach the widest audience.

Working with amazing games

In 2024 we got to work with an incredible cross-section of games. We went live with Baldur’s Gate 3, the absolute GOTY 2023, Ara: History Untold published by Xbox Game Studios, Gorilla Tag the most active VR game on the market. The simulator genre remains incredibly hungry for mods with massively talented creator communities, and has always been a winner for us; this year CarX Drift Racing Online and Transport Fever 2 elected to use mod.io and we couldn’t be more grateful! Finally we had some titles taking us all the way back down to memory lane and our ModDB.com heritage with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Legends of the Zone on consoles, Homeworld 3, and Sins of a Solar Empire II.

Industry analysis

Anecdotally, the evidence of UGC being a strong success factor for games has always been there. In 2024 we wanted to accurately quantify the impact UGC can have on games of all shapes and sizes. The outcome was published research commissioned with Simon Carless from GameDiscoverCo. Together looking at 5 years of historical data from the 1,000 largest games on Steam, key findings over the five year timeframe presented a strong case for UGC with 23%+ revenue lift and 90%+ higher player engagement the most notable.

Recently, these compelling metrics were also supported by industry analyst Matthew Ball observations, shared in his recent State of Video Gaming in 2025 report. While many growth engines used by games have reached the point of exhaustion, UGC is highlighted as one with plenty of potential ahead.

Product update

Operating at the forefront of UGC innovation is what excites us at mod.io. The uniquely diverse spread of games, creators and communities we represent underpins everything we do, alongside our strength to provide granular control, while maximizing accessibility for players new to UGC.We shipped a lot in 2024 including:

• Advanced live metrics, the most detailed available for both game developers & modders.
• New Component UI tools for game developers to easily build in-game custom UIs.
• Improvements to our moderation tools, including a report system for modders, driven specifically by our experience servicing Baldur’s Gate 3 community.
• Monetization solutions, paving the way to create revenue opportunities for creators.

Looking ahead

Our focus in 2025 is to work on solving the big challenges faced by studios who want to pursue creator economies, and establish the case-studies that’ll serve as the foundation for others to follow, and unlock another level of creative content for players, and revenue for creators studios and who want to make UGC central to their longevity and success.

For studios, we’re going to continue to emphasize the control, flexibility and ownership we strive to provide through our dashboards, customizable UIs, APIs and SDKs as our USPs. This means strengthening the self-service and white-label nature of our product, and enabling their games to become destinations for player-led creativity and experiences.

For creators, your requests are firmly in the center of our cross-hair, with the vast majority of our innovation focused on the feedback we’ve received from you this year. Expect to see more ways to connect and engage with the games and players you are modding for, via showcases, events, dynamic metrics, collections and other social features. We want to help you feel and receive real-time positive input and feedback from the players interacting with your content.

2025 is a year we’re super excited for, we have an extremely strong pipeline of product innovation and studio partnerships lined up, and can’t wait to get monetization, collections, dynamic metrics and more in the hands of early adopters. Reach out if you’d like to discuss.