Nexus Mods' latest modathon isn't a typical modathon, it's a first go at the same for multi-mod collections

With their latest Fallout modathon having wrapped up at the close of last year, mod-hosting site Nexus Mods have decided to try something new with their latest event designed to supercharge mod creation around a specific game or theme. Rather than asking folks to submit fresh individual mods like usual, the modathon that’s about to kick off is all about putting together chunky multi-mod lists which can overhaul a game in one fell swoop.

These user-assembled modlists, dubbed Collections, are a feature Nexus Mods have been pushing for a number of years now, so it’s not surprising they’re now serving as the subject of a modathon for the first time.

Set to run from January 26th to February 8th, the first “Collectionathon” is a Fallout-themed one, with season two of a certain radioactive TV show putting out the remainder of its weekly episodes in the coming weeks.

“We want to see you reimagine the Wasteland in bold new ways, whether that’s by taking one of your favourite games from the series and amping it up or by bringing the world of Fallout to a brand new title,” reads the brief from the nexus of modders. “Through survival overhauls, lore-friendly refreshes, or wild experiments, we want to see it all, and whatever your idea, we can’t wait to see your creativity in action!”

If you fancy getting involved, you’ll need to do so via Vortex, Nexus Mods’ Windows-only mod manager. As a bit of extra context, Vortex is now the only mod manager the mod hosts are working on, with them having announced plans to can development of a multiplatform Nexus Mods App earlier this month. Central to the pitch behind that app was the idea it’d work on the likes of the Steam Deck and PCs running Linux. Though, Nexus Mods haven’t totally ruled out that functionality potentially making its way to Vortex further down the line.

“We’re also exploring what Linux support might look like for Vortex in the future,” Nexus mods owner Victor Folmann wrote in a post about the decision. “While getting every game and mod working on Linux might not be possible, it’s an area we want to keep evaluating where it makes sense.”

While I can see the appeal of curated modlists designed for folks to be able to install in one click, having dabbled a bit with Vortex during my early modding days, I can’t say I’ve ever given one of these collections a proper go. I momentarily considered it when setting up my last Cyberpunk 2077 run, but instead chose simply to install manually so I could stick exclusively to mods I wanted and regularly pause to check everything was working as intended as my load order grew.

To be fair, I was benefitting from years worth of built-up knowledge in terms of mod installation and what’s out there Cyberpunk mod-wise, so I might simply not be in main target audience for collections at this point. Still, it’s a lot of faith to be putting in the people who curate such lists to keep them up to date and regularly tested. Then again, that’s arguably the same sort of trust you have to put in mod creators anyway, if you’re installing works one-by-one.

As of writing, Fallout 4’s already got just over 2,200 collections, while New Vegas has 961, and Fallout 3 99. We’ll have to see what sort of boost this collection jam gives to those numbers.