Friday, January 10, 2025

Space Engineers 2 - Steam Workshop Support

Space Engineers community,

I have good news to share: Space Engineers 2 will use Steam Workshop as its primary platform for user-generated content. This decision comes directly from listening to our community, particularly our content creators, who have expressed a strong preference for Steam Workshop.

Our initial plan to use Mod.io was driven by the goal of providing a unified backend for both PC and console platforms. However, your feedback made it clear that Steam Workshop's established ecosystem and features are crucial for our PC community. When our community speaks with such a clear voice, it's important for us to listen and adapt our plans accordingly.


Steam Workshop support will be added in our first major update (VS 1.1) after the Early Access launch on January 27. For our console players, we are evaluating the best approach to provide them with UGC access and will share more details as we progress.

Thank you for your passionate feedback. Your input continues to help shape Space Engineers 2's development.

Best regards, 

Marek Rosa 
CEO & Game Director
Keen Software House


12 comments:

  1. It's great Keen is listening to the community on things like this. Looking at a bunch of comments about SE2 this seemed to be the biggest issue for people, it was a smaller issue for me, but still I found the departure from Steam Workshop surprising.

    However, knowing now that Mod.IO was only planned to be in the background of an in-game workshop, I'm not actually sure if Steam Workshop really is a huge improvement. If it simply acts as an underlay to the same UI, Mod.IO might as well be used, and then all players would be able to use mods. Perhaps, if that's how it was planned, the messaging of it was a little hit-or-miss for people - where it was maybe assumed in order to find mods you'd have to browse the Mod.IO website, instead of an in-game browsing system?

    I'm happy to see Steam Workshop back, I don't think you can go wrong with that, but Mod.IO didn't seem too bad with the implementation planned, as far as my understanding goes! Again though, go Keen on the community-first action here, I hope this'll lead to a great community for SE2!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for the feedback! SE2 will indeed have an in-game mod browser, so whether the backend is Steam Workshop or Mod.IO wouldn’t change much for players. However, when we looked at what creators prefer, it was clear that Steam Workshop is their platform of choice. Many creators have built strong communities on Steam over the years, and we want to respect that. While Mod.IO has its merits, this decision aligns with what the majority of creators and players value most. Thanks for sharing your thoughts—community input is always crucial for us!

      Delete
    2. I'm curious about what was the primary reason against mod.io other than having to create an account on platform outside of Steam.

      Delete
    3. Will console players be able to access compatible mods and blueprints hosted on the Steam Workshop or will we be locked to Mod.io as in SE1?

      As my major issue is that SE1 has a split mod/blueprint community between PC/Steam with the large majority of content and Console/Mod.io with a much smaller amount of content.

      As it’s rather annoying when I see a cool vanilla ship on the subreddit or on YouTube and I find out that it’s only on the steam workshop.

      As long as console players can access as many mods and blueprints as PC players can (other than mods/scripts that the console companies don’t allow on their consoles), I’d be perfectly happy.

      Delete
    4. Q: "what was the primary reason against mod.io other than having to create an account on platform outside of Steam"
      A: Actually, you wouldn't have to create an account on Mod.io. This would work seamlessly with your Steam account.

      Q: "primary reason"
      A: just to make it more accessible for creators, by listening what they want

      Q: Will console players be able to access compatible mods and blueprints hosted on the Steam Workshop or will we be locked to Mod.io as in SE1?
      A: We are analyzing what are the options to bring the best value both to PC and console players.

      Delete
    5. I expect for continuity between platforms it would be something akin to skyrim and fallout where certain mechanics are restricted

      Delete
    6. I have one question. You guys planning to build linux support for Space Engineers 2?

      Delete
  2. Great call guys, can't wait to the 27!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good to see Keen listen to the community, this is why I bought the early access+bonus content :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I understand the issue with mod.io being across platform solution but once again KSH has shown THEY LISTEN. I already pre-ordered and got the upgrade. SEE Y'ALL AT FIRST THAW!

    ReplyDelete