UGC Impact Study 2025
GameDiscoverCo & mod.io publish an updated study on the commercial impact of UGC support for games on PC, Consoles & VR.
After a first study last year that provided insights about the commercial impact of UGC & mod support on PC, we teamed up with GameDiscoverCo again to dive deeper into UGC data. This year’s UGC Impact Study expands to cover a wider scope, refining the data for PC, and including some first insights for UGC on consoles & VR. It shows that consistently, and across all platforms, games with official UGC or mod support have a significant commercial advantage compared to others.
UGC Impact for PC Games
GameDiscoverCo took into account games released on Steam with at least $1 million in revenue generated in their first month. This represents around 1200 games on PC, of which close to 20% have an official UGC solution. The data researched includes all games featuring an official UGC or mod support solution, whether it’s Steam Workshop, mod.io, CurseForge, or proprietary solutions such as Bethesda Game Studios Creations, Paradox Mods, or Frontier Workshop, for example.
A year after release on PC, games with UGC support showed an 8% revenue advantage over other titles, a difference that increased to 31% after 5 years.
The previous research work done by GameDiscoverCo had highlighted that while this impact varied slightly depending on game genres, and when UGC support was implemented, the positive impact was observed for all games across the data set. Simon Carless from GamesDiscoverCo explains it: “We’re struck by the fact that games with UGC often have depth of content and breadth of overall player interest which helps them outperform, long-term.”
The main factor explaining this long-term impact on commercial performance is the known impact of UGC support on players’ retention. Games getting more content via UGC tend to be played more and longer. The UGC Impact Study confirms and reinforces this point; comparing CCU (Concurrent Users) numbers from Steam, it shows games with UGC support displaying 75% better numbers after 2 years of being live compared to others. A gap that widens to a +115% difference after 5 years.
It’s an impact we’ve been able to verify with all types of partners using mod.io, from indie games to AAA, with impressive examples like Baldur’s Gate 3, for which Michael Douse, Director of Publishing at Larian Studios, confirmed that “after implementing official mod support in 2024, we saw an increase of 20% DAU across all platforms”.
GameDiscoverCo also took a dive into the data related to the impact of UGC support on DLC sales. While case studies have suggested a positive impact of UGC support on UGC sales before, we still regularly get questions about the potential cannibalization of sales by free mods or UGC.
What the data shows is frankly even stronger than we expected; games with UGC official support show both a higher DLC revenue overall, a higher number of DLC released on average, and most importantly, higher median revenue per DLC. On that specific figure, they performed 105% better than in other games.
UGC Impact for Consoles & VR
For games on consoles, GameDiscoverCo looked at titles with more than 100k copies sold in their first month, both on PlayStation and Xbox. Roughly 1000 games meet these criteria on both consoles, with 2% having UGC support on PlayStation and 3% on Xbox.
Games with UGC support on consoles showed an even stronger performance advantage than on PC. The data shows that games with UGC support on PlayStation consoles had 16% better performance after a year than others. For games on Xbox consoles, this advantage was as high as 24%, more than twice the commercial impact observed for games on PC.
For VR games, GameDiscoverCo looked at games with over a thousand player ratings on the Meta Quest Store, comparing those with official UGC solutions to those without.
The data set was too limited to get a detailed year-on-year comparison, but from their research, they estimated that VR games with UGC support had 30% more growth (as a median) over the past year than those without.
Study Takeaways
Overall, with an expanded scope of data and looking into new platforms, the UGC Impact Study 2025 has confirmed and reinforced the initial findings of the 2024 research.
Games with official UGC or mods support consistently and significantly outperform other titles commercially. This is largely explained by better player retention in the long term, associated with stronger sales of DLC and premium content, leading to a higher revenue overall.
Reach out to us if you want to discuss the data behind the study and how mod.io can help you bring cross-platform UGC or mod support to your game(s). You can also download the study summary & full report below.
