For the first time in its 24 years of existence, Nexus Mods is under new ownership. Nexus Mod creator, Dark0ne, made an official blog post talking about the reasons behind this change in ownership and what it means for the site going forward.
Dark0ne founded Nexus Mods back in 2001. Over the past two+ decades he has been running the show but is now stepping down due to "stress-related health issues." As you can imagine, doing anything for over two decades straight can take its toll on anyone.
The strain of being responsible for the behemoth I created has taken its toll. The stress of the job has been a regular source of anxiety and stress-related health issues. I realised that I have been burning out and this started to have an impact on my staff and Nexus Mods as a whole. So, I firmly believe that the best thing for the future of Nexus Mods is for me to step aside and bring in new leadership to steer the business forward with renewed energy to make Nexus Mods the modding community we all truly deserve.
The three new owners were a bit of an enigma until a user on ResetEra, RandomlyRandom67, did a bit of digging around. The post on ResetEra points out that the three are on LinkedIn and all work at a company called Chosen. This company, Chose, is reportedly a "growth-focused gaming company." Looking at their site, it looks like Chosen has had some role in operating HLTV.org, which some of you Counter-Strike esports fans may be familiar with.
This change in ownership has worried many Nexus Mod users about the potential for crappy monetization pushes. Specifically, users are worried about things such as NFTs and crypto being added to Nexus Mods.
One of the new owners, Viktor, directly addressed a comment about whether or not Chosen will add those sorts of unsavory monetization methods. The user said, "If you add NFTs or crypt to Nexus, you'll kill the culture and community. In response, Viktor stated, "100 percent agree - not happening."
Chosen does currently employ a fourth person, Nikolaj Nyholm. Though not mentioned as one of the new owners on Nexus Mods, Nikolaj Nyholm is credited as a founder and investor at Chosen. Readers of this site may know Nyholm as being the founder for the esports brand Astralis and their professional Counter-Strike team. It is unclear if Nyholm will have any actual part in Nexus Mods.
Nexus Mods is currently home to over 717,073 mods with almost 63.5K users.
