On developers being inspired by the modding community

[mattyscully]

Recently I had a thought about how the SV villagers' outifts ought to change depending on the season, and then found out that one of the most popular mods for the game added this feature. This is something I've been curious about for a while, and not just regarding SV: how normal is it for game developers to look at what popular mods have changed about the game, and take that as a suggestion for what could be added to the game in an update? I haven't heard of this ever happening (apart from a rumour a couple years back where Minecraft supposedly tried to acquire the popular optifine mod), which surprises me as I would have thought that if there's a change that many people have felt necessary to make to their own copy of the game, that could be seen as something that the normal game ought to have.

I realise this might come across as an indirect criticism of the game but I don't mean it to (I think ConcernedApe is doing a fantastic job). I'm just curious about what you guys think about this, especially as I feel that it might apply to Stardew Valley more due to the game's tight-nit community and famously attentive developer.

 

[tommybob]

I think it's a case of yes developers can adapt and turn mods into actual content but a lot of the time they chose not to for a few reasons.

It deters other modders because mods that get incorporated will no longer be used.
It adds to the content developers must update, test and keep working.
Could cause some legal implications big or small.
Community members put a lot of time into modding and would likely get no money back from most game devs which would hurt the community as a whole.

I love modding, I think giving so much content to the community from the community is a great way to keep games fresh. CA does a marvelous job with SDV already and mods just make life easier.

 

[mattyscully]

I think it's a case of yes developers can adapt and turn mods into actual content but a lot of the time they chose not to for a few reasons.

It deters other modders because mods that get incorporated will no longer be used.
It adds to the content developers must update, test and keep working.
Could cause some legal implications big or small.
Community members put a lot of time into modding and would likely get no money back from most game devs which would hurt the community as a whole.

I love modding, I think giving so much content to the community from the community is a great way to keep games fresh. CA does a marvelous job with SDV already and mods just make life easier.

Yeah good points

 

[Magically Clueless]

Modders tend to be some of the best people to give feedback (in my opinion) so I think if anything in the game changes to reflect popular suggestions it's because of that. I don't think he necessarily looks at popular mods and thinks "what can I do with that?" but more, "how can I make it easier to mod?" which 1.4 (and later versions) improved a lot on the modding end of things. 1.4 ended up making quite a few useful mods obsolete, but I took it as more "the core game should have this" over "this was really popular" since that'll happen sometimes. I have no doubt there are some mods he looks at and thinks are really cool though

I don't think we'll be seeing SVE or longevity or anything in the core game, but they might get more accessible over time depending on what the mod makers do and how CA & podunk deal with the changes

 

[Odin]

At this point there are so many Stardew mods that I'm not sure it would possible for new updates to not duplicate the features of at least a couple, intentional or not.

 

[tommybob]

At this point there are so many Stardew mods that I'm not sure it would possible for new updates to not duplicate the features of at least a couple, intentional or not.

I wonder if CA actually has not put in a feature he was planning because it was already part of a popular mod.