Back in December I announced our intention to create and release a system that provided some modest rewards to mod authors on Nexus Mods.

It's taken us a bit longer to implement than we initially anticipated, but I am happy to announce that from today, any mod authors on Nexus Mods will be able to opt their files into our Donation Points system.

The premise of the Donation Points (DP) system is relatively simple on the surface. Each month Nexus Mods will donate a set amount of money into a central donation pool from which the total DP available that month will be calculated. At the end of each month, mod authors will receive DP based on how many unique downloads their mods received that month. How many DP your mod(s) receive will depend on a number of factors including how much money we have donated into the pool and how many unique downloads all the other opted-in files from other authors have received.

1,000 Donation Points will be worth $1 and mod authors will be able to choose from a number of ways to spend their DP, including receiving straight up Pay Pal donations, buying Premium Membership from Nexus Mods, donating their DP to a number of charities or sharing their DP with other users on the site that they like or have received help from. We hope to expand on what's available in our store over the coming months and years while promoting exactly how much has been donated to mod authors (in a general sense) and how much we've given to charities on their behalf.

You've probably got some questions about this system so we've setup a Frequently Asked Questions section that should hopefully answer all your questions in detail.

There is a 3 month delay before any payouts happen so we've still got plenty of time before the first Donation Points are handed out to mod authors who opt into the system. We've done the bulk of the work on this system, but it's still early days and we've got a little ways to go before it's fully complete. However, we'd really like to get the ball rolling and letting mod authors opt their files into this new system is the first milestone.

In the first couple of months the money we donate into the pool will be lower than what we hope to donate each month. This is because we know it will take time for word to get out and we'd like to give all mod authors a good opportunity to gain from this system, rather than chucking a load of money into a big explosive opening only for a limited number of authors to benefit from it. However, I've set aside a budget of $100,000 from Nexus Mod's own funds over the next 12 months to this system. Our gesture of thanks from Nexus Mods, and the users of Nexus Mods, to all the mod authors who use our site and share their work freely with the internet. Looking forward, we would also like to introduce a crowd funding mechanism that will allow users of the site to donate to the monthly pool and top up what Nexus Mods is already paying in each month.

Also of note, we've updated our permissions system on mod pages to include an area where you can specify whether you'd like others using your assets/mods to be able to receive Donation Points for their mods and whether you'd like to be contacted for permission first. If this is of interest to you, please update your "Permissions" on your files accordingly.

Because our Donation Points system makes extensive use of the "Unique Downloads" stats, we have had to make a tough choice and remove our "guest downloading" system entirely from the site. For those not aware, up until this point we allowed non-members and users who are not logged in to download files that were less than 2MB in size. Unfortunately, with the prevalence of proxies, VPNs and services like TOR it has become impossible to accurately track unique downloads from these users and it opens up an avenue for abuse in our Donation Point system. As such, we had to choose between those downloads not counting in our Donation Point system or removing the guest download system entirely. We felt not counting these downloads would significantly impact some of the smaller mods out there (of which very popular mods, like SkyUI, are a part) and thus, we've decided to make it so that you need to be logged in to Nexus Mods in order to download all files on the site now. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

For more information on this system please read through our FAQ section. If you're a mod author and would like to opt-in one or more of your files, head on over to our opt-in page. You can access this page at any time from the "Mods" drop-down in the top-nav or in the bottom-nav of the site. And if you'd like to see what you can buy with your future DP then you can check out our store page.