The Nexus Mods App Alpha Test
A big one this month is the launch of the Nexus Mods app alpha test. We cannot stress enough how early stages the app is, and it currently only supports Stardew Valley. While we do have plans to support more games over time, this will be a long process, so bear with us. However, it is still incredibly exciting to be able to invite people to test and give feedback on their experience with it in its current form. A lot more details and information about this alpha test can be found here in our news post.
New Payment System
If you’re a premium member, you’ll have seen that our new payment system, Paddle, is now live. This means that from now on, all new premium subscriptions will go through Paddle. As we previously announced, the price of all premium members subscriptions will be increasing.
The online landscape has evolved over the last few years, and we’re now at the stage where we need to collect taxes globally. The downside is this has meant a price increase for our premium membership. But on the plus side, we can now serve more users from more countries. This change to Paddle also opens the door for us to explore other payment options in the future.
Navigation Changes
We’ve made several improvements to the site’s navigation to make it smoother and more consistent. We've refreshed the fonts, spacing, and overall responsiveness to match our design system.
We’ve standardised fonts, UI colours, spacing, and layout to make switching between the main site and Collections smoother. We’re also refining the “Games” tab, and it has been tested by focus groups. To explain this more and give some context, this means:
- Both the main site (https://www.nexusmods.com/) and the Next site (https://next.nexusmods.com/) now use the same header navigation.
- Fonts, layout, UI colours, and spacing have all been updated to align with our design system.
- You can now favourite up to 24 games, doubling the previous limit of 12. We’re also working on making it even easier to add and remove favourites in the future.
- We’ve added some basic metrics so we can see which links get used and which don’t. We’ll review this data and consider more changes based on actual usage.
- We’ve removed a handful of links that led to error pages in some scenarios.
We'd love to hear your thoughts so if you want to provide feedback please comment on this Forum thread.
Other Updates
- Updated OAuth success page: Now, when you log in to Nexus Mods through a third-party app like Wabbajack, or Vortex, you'll see a generic message instead of one specifically for Vortex.
- Removed outdated banners: Removed banners advertising Donation Points store items which are no longer available.
- Changes to the sitewide banner: Made changes to our sitewide banner for serious issues. It now sticks around persistently and is way more reliable.
- Improved page layout: Improved the layout of pages on our Next subdomain. Most pages now have a consistent container layout, part of our ongoing efforts to keep our design system uniform.
What are we working on next?
Remember last month when we mentioned in our roundup the mod comment search feature? Well, it’s still in the works, but we know how sought-after this is. Especially after all the feedback from people vocalising how much they’d love this to make a return. Although we can’t give more information on it at the moment, we can assure you this is something we’re working on and it will make a return.
Here’s what else you can look forward to in the coming months:
- Site Overhaul: More of the website will be on next.nexusmods.com.
- We’ve set up the layout of the new mod page, specifically the ‘Files’ section. Next, we’ll be hooking this up to the GraphQL queries to bring in live data.
- We’ve also created a new mod search results page, equivalent to https://www.nexusmods.com/mods/. It’s fully operational with production data, including all sorting options and the Adult Content and Game filters.
- We’re still working on the rest of the filters, so stay tuned for more updates.
- Donation Points System: We’re making changes to the way the Donation Points system works. Our new algorithm is in the works and payouts will reflect that. We’re also adding powerful new tools to give our Community team the ability to enforce our new Donation Points policy and guidelines. More news will follow on this soon.
- Changing our Payment Provider: All current Braintree credit/debit card and PayPal customers will have their subscriptions migrated to Paddle over the coming months.
- Moderation Tools: Our shiny new Moderation system continues to improve so we can action reports more effectively in response to higher site traffic.
As always, keep your feedback coming; we’ll bring more updates next month!
43 comments
You guys are really trying hard to take all the fun out of browsing this site. So many decisions are questionable to such an extent, that those must be by design. All of the wasted potential.
How the F! am I supposed to fit 24 games here?
The open tab takes almost half of the bloody screen. Did anyone really think this is a good idea?
How about a sleek, slim list? Less focus on the games avatar and more on the text. That way you save space and make the navigation faster.
Or even better: turn the pseudo-clickable button into a real one. The cut off Cyberpunk game in my screenshot looks like it's clickable. But it's not. So why design it that way? That's one way to BS people. The cross is useless because clicking the Nexus logo brings me right to the main site. There was a excellent opportunity to actually improve the site: turn the field of the game I'm surfing right now, into a list of my favorite games when I hover over it. And remove the cross. It would be really cool and appreciated. In that case I'd even accept the overly huge wall which gets shoved in my face after clicking on "games".
And no, I'm not going to apologize for my words here. After working 14 hours I come home and want to check if there are interesting new mods. But instead of having a relaxed surfing experience, I have to deal with this. If you don't want me to complain, then just don't annoy me. Simple as that.
As for the rest of your opinions, I actually think that offering a toggle for covers/this list style/compact like you mentioned would be nice and covers various users' preferences. More customization in general would be nice for everyone.
I understand that the close button seems unnecessary for you and others who are used to browsing the site and understand this pattern. But for people who don't realise that clicking into a game will suddenly filter all content through this, the 'x' indicates that a temporary filter has been applied and can be dismissed (similar to how reddit show search is being filtered). It's easy to forget that some people don't realise this has happened and when they do, don't know that clicking the logo to go home dismisses it.
An improvement we're exploring would be that when you click the "x", we keep you on the page you're viewing and remove the filter rather then navigate you back to the home page. There are some technical challenges around doing this that we're working through.
I appreciate all the feedback here - it's a really tricky to try and improve a deeply established pattern, (we've spent a lot of time discussing this interaction!) - but from testing with people we feel that this is clearer overall.
If I'm already on the game's page it looks like the button is doing nothing. No feedback at all. When I'm browsing my downloads or tracked mods, I use the good old "go back one page"-arrows in the browser. Or use a keyboard shortcut.
The old games list was horizontal and the way for the mouse was far shorter for those on the left side. If you want to keep that overly big list, then at least move it to the left border. It will speed up the navigation quite a bit. Especially if you are oldschool or a power user.
On all the criticism I've thrown at the Nexus for the new design, I want to clarify that the change to a more modern looking UI is understandable and I like the new navigation bar. What I don't like are the more than hard changes in navigation and fundamental works of the site. Do not change things just for the sake of it.
We are conscious of how switching between new and old parts of the sites can feel jarring for people. The main purpose of this update was to align both the new and old style of navigation to make switching between them feel more consistent.
I understand the sentiment of releasing one large update, but this would take exponentially longer and pose huge technical challenges. Releasing gradual updates allows us to move faster and have more control over the rollout, the trade-off being this period of transition between two UIs. As a design team, this is always at the forefront of our minds — we're making efforts to bring more subtle alignments between the visuals of both sites. We're looking forward to getting most of the main pages updated so we can start to focus on new features and improvements. Thanks for the feedback and support.
Just a little question/request: i don't know if this comes also with other games but is it actually possible to filter out translation mods? On Skyrim Special Edition there are a lot of translation mods which clutter up a lot the main page.
What's up with the next subdomain? I didn't remember seeing at all before.
While we understand that any change can be jarring, we want to get this right.
Any specifics are very useful to us. Generic 'I don't like it' feedback is less useful and not actionable.
There are many other considerations and it would add significant complexity and potential for fraud.
We do appreciate that our fixed global price is a pain point for users in certain countries with varying purchasing power or at a currency disadvantage.
The DP payouts have always been Net 90 (90 days after month end) and are likely to continue this way.