Vortex was first released to the public in February 2018 as an alpha build - replacing the ageing Nexus Mod Manager as our official modding tool. Since then we have continued to iterate on it based on feedback from the community by adding support for new games, implementing new features and fixing pesky bugs. The app can now help you manage mods for 230 games and boasts over 1,000,000 monthly users, so it's fair to say that it's been a massive success. We're not under any illusions that it's perfect, though.
Halgari joins the team as a fresh set of eyes with a wealth of experience making tools both in the modding space and professionally. He will be working closely with our team and the community to highlight what Vortex does well and investigate what could be better as we start planning our next major update.
Before you get too excited, this isn't going to change anything overnight. These things take time, so you aren't likely to see many differences in Vortex itself for a while yet. Just rest assured that the combined skills of Tannin (the lead developer on Vortex and creator of Mod Organizer 2) and Halgari are working together in the background to make the next version of Vortex even more powerful and intuitive.
I'm sure you will have a bunch of questions about this change, not least what it means for the future of Wabbajack. Halgari has written a statement on that which you may have already seen elsewhere but if you haven't here's a copy:
I wanted to take some time to update you all on my personal life a bit, in order to “get out ahead” of any rumors that will likely start brewing in the next few weeks.
Two weeks ago I gave notice to my IRL employer that I’m leaving the company. On October 24th, I’ll start my new job at Nexus Mods as the Product Owner of Vortex. Although this may seem like a sudden change, it’s something that’s been in the works for several months. I’m extremely excited for this new job as it will allow me to focus full time on something I very much enjoy: building open source modding tools.
Naturally the first question many of you will ask is: what does this mean for Wabbajack? First of all Wabbajack isn’t going away. Both Vortex and Wabbajack are open source (GPL-3) and can easily continue to operate in their own spaces. I will be scaling back the time I spend on Wabbjack, but part of the point of the transition to 3.0 was to make the project easier to maintain. And as it stands I can easily go several weeks without having to spend chunks of time fixing bugs to keep the project going. In the short term, nothing will change, I will continue to fix critical bug reports in my spare time, but I will not be adding new features to the project. In the long term I hope that the need for Wabbajack will decrease, but time will tell how realistic that goal is. However, the code will always be available on Github, so anyone is welcome to pitch in on fixes or features.
I can’t answer any questions at the moment as to what my plans for Vortex are, as I want to spend some time getting the lay of the land before finalizing my plans. But in broad strokes, I will say that I want to focus on making Vortex so amazingly awesome that it becomes the de facto standard for modding on any platform.
Thanks everyone for your support of Wabbajack, and I’m excited to see what the next year holds for the community.
To add to this, here are a few extra questions we've anticipated.
Is Wabbajack going to be merged with Vortex?
No, Wabbajack and the Collections feature in Vortex serve slightly different needs and will continue to peacefully coexist as they always have. Halgari has covered the future of Wabbajack in his statement above.
Will the 2.0 update for Vortex have this feature or that feature?
At this point we can't really answer these questions - it's way too early to say anything definitively. Although we'll keep you updated on any significant changes in future new posts.
I have some ideas for how to make Vortex better. How can I help?
Your feedback is invaluable to us and helps us decide what to work on next. If you would like to submit a suggestion or vote on the best ideas sent in by others you can do so in our swanky new feedback portal.
That's all we have for you today. If you have any other questions, feel free to post them in the comments but please keep it civil and respectful. Thanks!
109 comments
Comments locked
A moderator has closed this comment topic for the time beingIf i understand your statement right all mod devs should just be able to use mods created by others without there permission so that you doesn't have to download every dependency? Bro lmao you lazy
Vortex only got so much traction, cause Nexus reinforces it and doesn't actually give anyone the choice to use anything else, I personally rather install my MODs manually nowadays.
Vortex is extremely intrusive and bloated in it's current state.
However as the news post says, we're under no illusions and there is room for improvement.
Welcome to the team new guy btw.
Support the imperium before your rim worlds are all turned to glass!
Give Vortex another go, i know it sucked hard there for a while but it's been swimmingly awesome for 18 months at least. And that's managing the top two rows of the Nexus most modded games. At this stage I'd ignore collections though until they get some sort of qualification rating, otherwise it's just a bunch of some guys sneezes in a semi coherent list, then they add 350 more items and it's like "is this science?" no it is not, it is crash magic.
I am just a bit concerned seeing that some of the best coders are being sucked into the development of Vortex. I hope this will not become a monopoly.
Maybe you are just using it wrong
Here's an example of how it works for Collections.
just because nexus mod packs work, doesnt mean its great.
WJ doesnt even touches your OG files and their stockgame folder is a blessing.
To that question is there a downside?
Sorry for my ignorance. I think this might be my first ever post here. I'll see after I post what is my current count.
Anywho. From my perspective is I begrudgingly moved to Vortex from nexus mod. And it does great. I don't have to mess with LOOT. Although if I remember correctly I did with NM. For my mileage, It just pretty much works. And what more can one ask for from a technology?
Instead it's just a random list that people vote on whether it was good/worked or not. "good luck everybody else!"
Am I wrong?
Here's an example of how it works for Collections.
But I'll predict slowly but surely Halgari will drop working on Wabbajack.
Vortex is such a pain to work with, when coming from MO2.
No flies on you Mystic Meg, can you give us the lottery numbers while you've got your prediction hat on, and do you foresee the sun rising tomorrow morning?