Approved Mods

[thedavid]

I'd like to suggest that Egosoft consider a program to approve certain high quality mods. For myself, I don't play with mods because I like to use the Budgeted custom game start. Because of that, I don't want my game marked as modified. However, I will sometimes play around with mods temporarily just to check them out. Some mods are pretty nice and don't really mess up the game. I'd like to suggest a way for a mod to get approval from Egosoft and that way if a player uses that mod the game won't be marked as modified.

I know, testing and approving mods takes manpower that someone has to pay for. If a mod author really wants their mod approved, then they likely should have to pay for the company to check it. Alternatively, if a mod is very popular and doesn't cheat the game then perhaps Egosoft could reach out to the mod author. I think it would be nice to open up the ability to play with certain mods without getting the save marked as modified.

[CBJ]

We have considered it and it is still on the table as something we'd very much like to do. As you say, though, the issue is always the developer time needed, both to set up the signing tools and processes and then to verify each mod. Bear in mind that it's not just a one-off process, either; every time the mod is updated we would need to at least check that the changes didn't break anything, and put it back through the signing process.

There is one thing about your suggestion that I don't think would work, though: I doubt that mod authors, who already put a lot of time and effort into their work, would be willing to pay for the privilege of having their mods signed, and I'm not sure we'd want them too anyway.