Introducing the mod.io newsletter
Kicking off a transformative year, showcasing our new metrics dashboards, and bringing Unreal Engine plugin to 5.3.
It’s my pleasure to kick off 2024 with our first mod.io newsletter. Every other month, we’ll use this format to keep you updated regarding the mod.io product and business, and our thoughts on industry trends where user-generated content is involved.
2023 has been a good year for UGC, and for us at mod.io. We’ve seen an increasing number of AAA publishers embracing UGC integration. And we’ve been grateful to be part of that journey, working with Ubisoft, Gearbox, SEGA, Bandai Namco, Focus and Techland, among others.
As the conversation develops around live games and the challenges of content delivery, and some of the industry's biggest successes continue to emerge from the UGC scene (Lethal Company comes to mind); we see our partners pursuing their investment in UGC as a source for content and innovation.
On the monetization side, we’ve seen Roblox and Fortnite expanding their reach, as well as Bethesda coming back to the field with their Creator Club rebranded as Bethesda Game Studios Creations. We see more and more green flags when it comes to the reaction of creators and communities. We expect 2024 to be a year where vertically focused games demonstrate you don’t have to be a sandbox to build a vibrant creator economy, and have monetization features available for private preview, for studios wanting to take their first step.
This all rounds up into making the year ahead the most exciting of times for us. We have major projects scheduled for release with full mod.io integration, and some new functionalities to release that will significantly impact our ability to support the ambitions of our partners. We’re confident in positioning ourselves as the go-to white label UGC solution for studios and publishers wanting to expand in the field, with industry leading UGC features, without the challenge of building and maintaining an in-house solution.
New Metrics Dashboards
In the past few months, we’ve released a series of improvements to our metrics system, with the ambition of making mod.io statistics dashboard truly world class. We’ve been working with the feedback from our partners and creators, to provide improvements, new sources of data and features that bring day-to-day value to the teams working with them.
mod.io metrics now allow you to extensively monitor and report on the UGC activity surrounding your game including: content pipeline reporting, active creators, subscribers growth, and of course all the existing information on user activity, content, downloads and trends. Whether you need a quick overview of activity for reporting, or to dive deeper and identify specific patterns and behavior, our dashboards got you covered with up to the minute updates.
It’s also been built as a tool for community management and moderation, with detailed health statistics to monitor content reports and actions taken, complementary to our existing moderation and reporting tools. It now features extended ways to identify successful content and creators for your game, so that you can get meaningful insight, not just high level reporting.
Next up from us, will be a real time data feed so you can overlay metrics in your own BI systems, and the introduction of playtime and CCU tracking. This will allow games to go beyond download counts, and measure how much time their players are spending with UGC. To see our metrics dashboards in action, check it out via your game admin dashboard, or reach out to our team for a demo. We’re happy with how it’s evolved, but are looking for your feedback to bring further improvements, and make it a tool that brings value to all our users.
For more detailed information, you can check our latest blog update.
Unreal Engine 5, Plugin & support
One of our focuses last year was to improve mod.io Unreal Engine Plugin, and keep up with the latest updates for the engine. The plugin allows for hosting and install of UGC in game with mod.io, and provides UI for mod discovery, installation and collection management, as well as a C++ and Blueprint interface around the mod.io SDK, and it’s of course supported for all platforms.
We’re now fully compatible and available for versions up to UE 5.3. The latest changes came with some major improvements to performance and stability for the UI as well as improved game controller support.
The new out of the box plugin UI should already feel like a major improvement; but everything is, as per usual, also fully customizable to match with your game’s UI and brand. We’ll have some great examples of Unreal Integration releasing soon, such as Homeworld 3 from our friends at Black Bird Interactive and Gearbox in May. In the meantime, if you want a walkthrough of the mod.io UE Plugin, reach out and we’ll show you what can be done.
Meet us at GDC!
Next up we’ll be heading to San Francisco for GDC, and would love to meet, catch up, show you the latest features that we’re not entirely ready to disclose in this newsletter, and discuss business opportunities. Reach out to our team.
Latest Releases
