The last few years have been incredible for players and modders, as publishers and studios strive to make mod support more accessible in their games. Many of these initiatives are starting to take shape, with Ubisoft's City Building RTS Anno 1800 the latest to invite creators in, in the same year they are celebrating their 25 year jubilee.
Making Modding More Accessible
Helping to make this happen, are our friends at mod.io, who are powering the in-game mod integration and community. Innovative work done by mod.io included the creation of an embeddable web UI which can run in-game on the custom Blue Byte Anno Engine. In addition the embeddable web app is also available on the Anno Union mod hub, allowing players to connect with creators and content via the pre-existing official community site for all things Anno.
The launch is taking place in two phases.
Phase 1
Live now, is an open invitation for all creators to start creating and submitting mods they have created to the public mod hub now live on mod.io. In the first 48 hours already 100 mods have been submitted!
Phase 2
From the August 22nd at 3PM CEST, the in-game integration will go live for all PC players, so gamers can subscribe to mods on the web or via the game menu, and have them automatically installed and playable.
Grab Anno 1800
If you have ever wanted to play a historically rich, city-building RTS, now is an amazing time to grab Anno 1800, which you can find at the links below:
When asked why did Ubisoft partner with mod.io to enable official mod support for Anno 1800, Charles Harribey - Senior Producer on the project responded with:
"As Anno 1800 would be our first title with mod support, we wanted to find an experienced partner to help guide us. During our evaluation process, mod.io stood out for their professionalism and enthusiasm. Those became the deciding factors. The result has been a successful collaboration between the two companies on this important first step."
For more details on the plan and vision for future mod support in Anno 1800 and beyond, you can find the official announcement from the Anno Team at Ubisoft and the official announcement from the mod.io team. It's awesome to see such a massive step being made, and at ModDB and mod.io we cannot wait to see and support more publishers, studios and games to continue to embrace their modding communities as Ubisoft has done today.
Wow, somehow cool. But hmm, ubisoft?
I sense a future GOG release.
Give people official tools for Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla!