Overview

Hey there reader! A couple of months ago we asked the Thunderstore community to participate in a survey regarding modding platform monetization. We also promised to share the results publicly, which is what this post is all about!

This post will cover the following topics:

1. Why was a survey done?

2. Our breakdown of the survey results

3. How do the results affect Thunderstore’s monetization strategy?

If you just want to see the data, you can find the full results here: 2023 Monetization Questionnaire Results

First of all - why a survey?

The topic of monetization has always been controversial in the modding space. Until now, all the decisions we’ve made regarding monetization have been based on our own assumptions and subjective experiences as end users & mod developers. While that has worked for now, we also recognize that our assumptions could be wrong, which makes having hard data to back up our decisions extremely important.

Running a survey not only ensures we’re not making false assumptions about what our communities think, but it also informs us about what we’re doing better compared to some of our competitors.

In short, we want Thunderstore to be built according to the wishes of our communities, and running surveys like this helps us make sure we’re on the same page.

The who and where of our community

We aimed to get a minimum of 100 responses, but it turns out a whopping 1,150 of you filled out our survey (hats off to you)!

Out of this group, 33% are mod creators. The majority of the respondents were between 13-25 years old (57%), with the 19-25 year olds snatching 37% of the pie.

Outside of Thunderstore, Steam Workshop and Nexus Mods are the biggest players out there, with the others coming in at roughly the same distribution.

While the results website only shows an AI analysis of text responses, we also manually went through them to make sure we got the whole picture.

In the case of platform choice, many reported choosing based on what the established location is for the game they’re creating mods for. Besides that, many reported wanting to make their content as easy to use as possible, such as with a mod manager or other tooling.

Mods and Monetization

Here's where it gets interesting. While 73% haven't tipped mod creators yet, a solid 61% are either already doing it or would like to do so.

For those not donating, it's not just about the cash, but worries about how it could affect the modding scene as a whole.

Professional modding? Seems like a 50-50 split. Many creators noted that they would rather focus on developing their own game if they had the option, while others had reservations about their skills as modders or feasibility of the concept overall. However, a solid 45% were open to the idea.

Monetization strategy

Donations? Display ads for free users with an ad-free subscription? Subscriptions with some nice cosmetic benefits? These results suggest you are all in for these. Not so much for venture capitalist funding and paywalls, though - in fact, many of the responses mentioned you would expressly not support platforms that put core features or content behind a paywall.

When we asked about a subscription pricing, the median came out to $5, with an average of $5.26.

73% would seriously consider subscribing if it helped the mod creators, which interestingly enough exceeds the 61% that were ready to support creators directly. Perhaps due to a single subscription being easier to manage?

Takeaways

So, what's the main takeaway? Users love a good UX, easy access to mods, and hate anything that comes between you and your content. 61-73% of users say they are open to financially supporting mod creators.

Thunderstore’s monetization strategy

For a while now we’ve been contemplating the best way forward for Thunderstore as an organization.

Some of our early stage competitors (such as modrinth or mod.io) have sought out funding from VC investors; an option that has also been available to us, but one we’ve wanted to hold out on at least for now. Thunderstore is still majority owned by the dev team, which we feel is important in order to protect the interests of our communities. Bringing on outside investors would undermine that guarantee.

This survey has confirmed many assumptions we had about our communities and their perspective on monetization. However, it is also true that we need funding in order to maintain and further develop the platform.

Soon we will be launching a subscription option that will offer some benefits, such as an ad-free experience, a profile badge, and early access to the upcoming website redesign. We intend to make subscriptions the primary way to directly support us and our vision going forward, and its popularity could ultimately end up dictating whether or not that vision is financially feasible to achieve.

More information about the subscription will be coming out in the next few weeks.

From all of us at Thunderstore, thank you for being a part of this journey! If you have any questions or feedback, you can always reach out to us on our Discord server!