Baldur’s Gate 3, a critical success for cross-platform mod support

When Larian Studios approached us while they were planning the work for their official mod support for Baldur’s Gate 3, their priority was to bring their players a single solution for all platforms, and one that would be fully integrated in-game and within the Larian ecosystem.

“When we had to evaluate how to support modding for our game, mod.io had proven their solution worked well in other games and were extremely open to communication and assisting with the ins and outs of prepping our platform, making them an ideal option.” remembers Kevin Van Nerum, Lead Tools at Larian.

Custom & White Label Integration

With a high level of expectation in terms of both quality and customization, they elected to build their mod support using mod.io Rest API directly. A more complex and demanding approach than relying on our SDK, but it gave them the maximum level of flexibility to develop a solution fitting their exact needs and specificities, such as allowing players to download mods in-game without being logged-in.

The vision from the get-go was for mod.io to be the backend of Baldur’s Gate 3 official mod support, solving all of the challenges to deliver cross-platform support, while remaining mostly invisible to players. Naturally, it uses our suite of white-label premium features; our Studio SSO solution is what allows Larian to use their account system for players to connect to mod.io and synchronize their content across their website and all platforms. The BG3 official mod website is built with our white-label Embedded Mod Hub to create a portal tailored to their brand and player experience.

Safe & Scalable Moderation Solutions

With the size and level of engagement of the Baldur’s Gate 3 community, moderation was another key point of focus. It became an even bigger priority post-release when hundreds of creators started building mods that millions of players quickly engaged with. Something Alisha AKA WombatMedic, Larian’s Senior Community Strategist highlights:

“Moderation continues to be a very important aspect of Baldur’s Gate 3 being able to support mods officially, and mod.io swiftly rose to the challenge of introducing a range of changes based on our feedback that would support the safety of mod authors and the Baldur’s Gate 3 community.

As well as helping us get set up with their unique rules editor for moderation ahead of release, mod.io worked with us to introduce a filtering system for moderation reports. This has helped us moderate more efficiently, allowing us to quickly distinguish between severe reports of misconduct, and milder reports of mods simply not working quite as intended, and even filter these by platform so that we could act on them as appropriate.

They worked with us to also organise a brand-new dashboard for mod authors where they’d be able to see reports of their mod not working, complete with useful information to help them tackle any issues with their mod. […]”

All the improvements described above: new filter system for game admins, more granularity in reports including platform of origin, better tool to navigate and review content to moderate, and dedicated report system for mod authors have been rolled out at the platform level, benefiting all game developers and creators using mod.io.

Outstanding Results

The results align with the game’s exceptional nature and Larian’s work engaging with mod authors in the Baldur’s Gate 3 community. Six months after release, their creators shared more than 3500 mods, which collectively generated over 100 million downloads. A record for any game using our service.

Larian teams have curated more than 400 mods for console players, ensuring content safety & compatibility to be playable on all platforms as part of their process for making mods available on console. The vast majority of the most popular mods are already available and new mods are curated for console on a regular basis. Today, more than 40% of downloads come from console players.

Overall, according to Larian’s own numbers, more than 40% of their player base has been enjoying playing with mods directly from the in-game mod browser. Larian has highlighted official mod support, and the creative passion of the Baldur’s Gate 3 community, as one of the reasons for the game’s sustained popularity and success more than a year after launch.

Working with Larian has been incredibly exciting and humbling. Embracing their outstanding level of care and demand for quality in the end-user experience has been transformative, pushing us forward and driving many improvements to mod.io. We couldn’t be more grateful for their trust, and pleased with their incredible achievements!

“mod.io were very easy to work with and aligned well with our player-focused goals. They made navigating the intricate world of user-generated content across several different platforms much easier through their partnership with us. They were immensely knowledgeable and helpful in setting up a modding platform that works well with our own systems and that was also very easy to use and intuitive to our players!” — Petro Gornostayev, Associate Producer.

Baldur’s Gate 3 official mod support is available to players on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Mac, and GeForce NOW. For more information, https://baldursgate3.game/.

If you want to discuss cross-platform official mod support and hear about our latest functionalities and more case studies, get in touch with us!