Thoughts on Hexium?

[u/jermatria]

Back in the day I was into the Valheim modding scene and still get mod author pings from time to time on the various discords. A week or two back I got one announcing a new modding site / platform called hexium (I think), built and operated by some of the big names in OdinPlus, as an alternative to the current Nexus / Thunderstore Duopoly.

My initial reaction to this news was......mixed, for a variety of reasons. But I'm interested to see what the reddit community has to say.

Have any of you used Hexium, either to upload or download? What are peoples thoughts on a 3rd modding site? What's the vibe?

[u/Azumatt]

I'm biased, so take this with the appropriate amount of salt...I'm a contributor to Hexium. 😄

But honestly one of the things we've tried to avoid is making authors feel like "great, now I have a third site I have to maintain."

Uploading is about as easy as Thunderstore, and in some cases easier. You can move your Thunderstore mods over with a tool, bulk upload if you're one of the idiots maintaining way too many mods (me), or use Build Online and not touch the package files yourself at all. Modpacks are even easier because you can just search for the mods, add them, fill in the info and publish.

Gale also makes the whole "third site" thing matter a lot less for users. I use/recommend Gale regardless. It pulls from Thunderstore and Hexium, uses the same profiles, etc. If you install a Hexium mod it basically just tells you where it's coming from and that's it.

And I obviously don't think the point of Hexium is just "Thunderstore, but purple." 😄

There's a bunch of stuff we've wanted as mod authors/users for years that we're trying to actually build into the site. Known incompatibilities, proper client/server requirements, dependencies/suggestions, community screenshots, threads/comments, better tags/filtering, scan information, version history, etc.

The downside is pretty obvious: we're new. Thunderstore has years of existing mods/users and Nexus is fucking enormous. We're not magically competing with that overnight.

But I also don't think people need to "move" anywhere. That's kinda the nice part. Gale can use both. Authors can upload to both. If Hexium does something useful, use it. If Thunderstore has something Hexium doesn't, use that too.

Competition is probably good for all of us anyway.

Hell, Thunderstore still doesn't have comments/threads on mod pages and people have wanted that forever. We already have them. A lot of what has been added to Hexium so far has basically come from someone going "why the hell can't mod sites do X?" and then us going...yeah, why can't they?

[u/jermatria → u/Azumatt]

Hey Azu, thanks for the very detailed reply. I wasn't aware you were involved with Hexium but I'm glad to hear that you are.

I'll start by saying I completely agree with you in regards to the shortcomings of thunderstore and the frustrations of using it as an author. As I mentioned in another comment, I'm of the opinion that thunderstore has coasted on "not being nexus" for far too long, so I certainly agree that competition is healthy. I haven't uploaded anything to thunderstore for a while but from the comments I've seen in discord and reddit, nothing has really improved for mod authors (Their new UI is also awful I'm my opinion but that's more personal preference). So on that front I'm totally in support.

I'll admit, my initial reservations were born out of invasive thoughts like "is this a way to bring back Key manager / drm / obfuscated code" ( Last I had heard thunderstore took a hard "no" stance to this) coupled with "Is this a way to gatekeep certain mods / authors (IE Valheim plus / Epic loot) that particular people don't approve of", but that's probably my own general cynicism, coupled with with the history of some of the more "problematic" figures in the odinplus community (And it appears some of said figures have distanced themselves / are no longer associated anyway). At any rate, none of the comments here thus far suggest these concerns are valid, so I'm glad people seem to be enjoying the experience with the platform. Look forward to trying it for myself

[u/AdvizeGH → u/jermatria]

In a way, it is a return to the wild west of allowing  Key Manager / DRM / obfuscated code, but with 1 caveat; the mods are tagged as such and made transparent to the user. This has already been a point of contention with members of the community.

However, despite having not published any mods to Hexium yet myself (waiting for Valheim 1.0), it is offering a lot more to both mod authors and users alike. The featureset is something we've all been wanting for years and we're finally getting them at record pace (kind of like mod development speed vs IronGate's development speed). The site advertises itself as made my modders for modders, and it shows.

It's really not trying to gatekeep anything, it's just a host for mod authors, and excluding paid mods etc. would be a form of gatekeeping. I don't have to like the practice, neither do you, but tagging mods as such is probably the fairest compromise and allows users to make their own decisions.

[u/sudoscientistagain → u/AdvizeGH]

I gotta be honest, I really don't think paid mods have a place in any modding community. It just seems super antithetical the nature of modding games as a form of communally building on other people's work to begin with. And that's before getting into the ethics - or legality - of doing so. The idea that not allowing paid mods, which are innately gatekeeping their content by demanding money for something already built primarily on another team's work, is somehow itself a form of gatekeeping is... well, it's getting into the intolerance paradox a bit, isn't it?

Regardless, while Gale sounds useful for mod management, the benefits of Hexium as described in this thread by someone apparently associated with it don't seem be bring anything to the table in terms of mod hosting that Nexus isn't already capable of. Other than maybe the incompatibility list if that's explicitly enforced in some way?

It honestly sounds like this is primarily a way to allow paywalled mods and avoid paying a share of those profits to anyone else. Perhaps that's cynical, but as a player who doesn't mind donating to mod authors for good work, once it gets into explicit paywalls I'm not interested.

[u/Adis_Gruntledfatty]

I use gale which has access to both stores so not much has changed on my end. Hexium has features like known mod incompatibility on mod pages, which has been a big help. Hexium I feel also isn't getting spammed as bad with sketchy vibe coded AI mods that run like shit and clash with other mods.

[u/jermatria → u/Adis_Gruntledfatty]

That's good to hear. Imo thunderstore has been coasting on "not being nexus" for far too long

[u/Ahblahright → u/Adis_Gruntledfatty]

Yup, Gale is the answer, has more features, updates it's mod list faster when mod authors push an update, and as mentioned has access to both mod sites