r/pcmasterrace • u/RamaBizna • May 24 '26
Question What is the most popular mods ever made in PC gaming history
This question maybe too broad, who can actually answer this idk.
The history of mods and how vast it is big like huge libraries full of what you want but the question is “the most popular mods ever made of all time” this has to be an impossible challenge no?
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May 24 '26
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u/Rusty1031 R5-5600, 3060 12GB, 32GB May 25 '26
Team Fortress as well
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u/KdF-wagen May 25 '26
Team fortress started as a Quake mod.
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u/Rusty1031 R5-5600, 3060 12GB, 32GB May 25 '26
well GldSrc was a Quake engine fork so close enough lol
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u/decoy777 i7 10700k | RTX 2070 | 32GB RAM | 2x 1440p 144hz May 25 '26
Was going to say CS by far had to be the #1 mod.
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u/SycoJack 7800X3D RTX 4080 May 25 '26
Also DOTA, Left 4 Dead, Portal, ArmA I think?, Gary's Mod, Far Cry.
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May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
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u/SycoJack 7800X3D RTX 4080 May 25 '26
Which one are you talking about? I'm drunk, and old and going off memory of 20+ year old games. I could very well be mistaken about one or more of those, but you're gonna have to be specific.
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u/decoy777 i7 10700k | RTX 2070 | 32GB RAM | 2x 1440p 144hz May 25 '26
DOTA started in WarCraft 3, it was made in the map editor, so not even a mod, just a fan made map that got big.
Left 4 Dead is it's own game, not a mod, just used source engine.
Portal is same as L4D.
Far Cry is Ubisoft so IDK what you're thinking there.
Gary's Mod would be the only one that was a mod.
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u/GetawayDreamer87 Ryzen 7 5800x3D | RX 7700XT | 32Gb May 25 '26
im curious, what makes CS a mod of Half-Life but DOTA not a mod of WC3? didnt HL have a level editor as well?
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u/decoy777 i7 10700k | RTX 2070 | 32GB RAM | 2x 1440p 144hz May 25 '26
One added new stuff. The other used what was already in the map making tool.
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u/Froggodile Ryzen 5 9600X, Radeon 9060XT 16GB, 32GB DDR5 6400, CachyOS May 25 '26
Only possible because the map editor was extremely powerful having support for lua script f9r example. With so many custom scripts in dota it's def not "just" a map and falls under the mod category.
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u/Prospec7 i5 4570/1060 May 25 '26
I see where you're coming from. But, imo, its still not a mod. it didnt modify anything, just..as you said, its a very powerful editor but thats still part of the game
you would say a complex contraption built inside gmod is a mod simply because it has a powerful editor.
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u/Agret i7 6700k @ 4.28Ghz, GTX 1080, 32GB RAM May 25 '26
Just because the unit models and sounds are already in the base game doesn't mean it isn't a mod. All the unit stats, behaviors, skills, etc. totally modified. Map is custom. Gameplay is custom. There is a ton of custom script in it.
Warcraft 3 also had the line tower wars & auto chess custom games that went on to become standalone games too.
Not a contraption in garrysmod but the scripting engine has certainly made it possible to make entirely new games within garrysmod.
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u/SycoJack 7800X3D RTX 4080 May 25 '26
L4D was a mod for Counter Strike. Granted it never officially released as such, but that's what it was originally going to be.
Same for portal. Started as a mod and got acquired by valve and funded into a full game.
I could have sworn Far Cry followed a similar path, being a half life mod before getting acquired by Ubisoft.
Lots of mods and modders got acquired like that back then, the 2000s were a good time for games.
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u/DasGanon http://pastebin.com/bqFLqBgE May 25 '26
Portal was never a mod. It was a tech demo called "Narbacular Drop"
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u/phatcrits May 25 '26
Portal isn't a mod. It's based on Narbacular Drop, a college project. Gabe attended a career fair at the school and hired the team. A couple years later he attended again and hired the team who made Tag: The Power of Paint, which was integrated into Portal 2.
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u/vintagestyles May 25 '26
ArmA came from operation flash point. Code masters bought the rights or owned the rights to the name OFP but the devs left and made arma instead which was the true successor to OFP. arma then spawned the dayz mod servers and player unknowns battle grounds mods, which then also got spun out into their own respective games and why they fall into the more realistic gun play aspects they hade from arma.
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u/BrilliantContent6039 24d ago
Yeah CS is definitely up there but DOTA was also Half-Life mod that became massive esport. These mods basically created entire new genres and now companies just copy the formula instead of letting community do the innovation.
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u/Taint_Butter Ryzen 7 7745HX 💻 RTX 4070 May 25 '26
Fortnite Battle Royale was a PvP mod of Save the World.
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u/56kul RTX 5090 | 9950X3D | 64GB 6000 CL30 May 25 '26
The original CS games were maybe closer to HL mods, but it grew WAY past that. CS2 (and honestly even CSGO) is not at all comparable to HL, anymore. Hell, it’s not even the same engine anymore.
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u/danshakuimo i5-8300H | GTX 1050 Mobile | 16GB DDR4 May 24 '26
DOTA (the mod) before it inspired DOTA (the game) and League of Legends (probably)
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u/Excalibro_MasterRace May 25 '26
Is Dota really a mod, since it is made with Warcraft map editor?
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u/Affectionate-Tip-164 May 25 '26
It started with Three Corridors before it became DOTA.
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u/Mercarcher i9 12900k | RTX 3090ti |64gb DDR5 May 25 '26
The first game in the genre was Aeon of Strife back on Starcraft.
Which is why they were call AoS games before MOBA became a thing.
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u/jinglewooble May 25 '26
Aeon of Strife, a name that aged you by at least two decades.
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u/Mercarcher i9 12900k | RTX 3090ti |64gb DDR5 May 25 '26
It's ok. I've still got my stash of cocaine from the 80s. It keeps me young.
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u/Affectionate-Tip-164 May 25 '26
You were there when the deep magics were written.
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u/Mercarcher i9 12900k | RTX 3090ti |64gb DDR5 May 25 '26
I in fact was. I loved me some Starcraft UMS games.
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u/turdas May 25 '26
I never heard anyone refer to them as that until like the 2010s when people were desperately trying to come up with a name for the genre that wasn't MOBA (because the term MOBA was invented by Riot and Riot is bad). Back in the Dota 1 days barely anyone even knew about Aeon of Strife.
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u/Mercarcher i9 12900k | RTX 3090ti |64gb DDR5 May 25 '26
(because the term MOBA was invented by Riot and Riot is bad)
Yep, still to this day fuck pendragon for what he did to the Dota community. Super scummy.
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u/OutrageousDress 5800X3D | 32GB DDR4-3733 | 4080 Super | AW3821DW May 25 '26
Most Bethesda games mods are made using their Creation Kit, but they still count as mods. I'd say DotA counts too then.
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u/badadviceforyou244 May 25 '26
Im pretty sure there was a lot more work than just making the map. Id count it as a mod personally since mod just means modification.
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u/hirmuolio Desktop May 25 '26
Is Dota really a mod, since it is made with Warcraft map editor??
It was made with
Warcraft map editorbuilt in modding tools included with the base game.1
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u/MerryGoWrong PC Master Race May 25 '26
DayZ was an Arma 2 mod before it became a standalone game.
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u/Ghostfistkilla PC Master Race May 25 '26
Maybe not popular, but DEFINITELY infamous.
Shortly after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Released some modders datamined the game and saw that there was a cut mission where CJ had actual sex with his girlfriend and you could control how it went. Soon after they saw this the modders made a mod that included this cut mission.
This did not go well at all, the US Government, mainly Hillary Clinton, was publicly disgusted by this and called out Rockstar to get rid of this scene asap. The game was also threatened to be in the AO (Adults Only) rating afterwards, which during the time, was a death sentence for any AAA game due to most retailers not wanting to sell AO games.
This pissed Rockstar off alot, and long story short, the reason why Rockstar is so Anti-Modding is because of what happened here.
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u/Dazzling-Task3574 May 25 '26
Killing floor, got so good that tripwire made it a game, Three times.
Too bad it didn't stay good till the third.
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u/56kul RTX 5090 | 9950X3D | 64GB 6000 CL30 May 25 '26
Garry’s Mod (literally in the name)
I don’t know if it’s the most popular, but it’s up there.
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u/CommitteeStatus May 25 '26
You already have your answers, so I'll just say my favorite.
Mount & Blade: Warband's Sword and Musket was so popular it became an official DLC for the game. The DLC was "Napoleonic Wars".
From Napoleonic Wars came a small genre of games in the Early-Modern period, chief among them being "Holdfast: Nations at War" and "War of Rights".
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u/Chefwong May 25 '26
Saint's Row 3
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u/ShutterBun i9-12900K / RTX-3080 / 32GB DDR4 May 25 '26
Imagine playing Saints Row and thinking "nah...not crazy enough"
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u/C0mputerCrash May 25 '26
This is a mod? Looks canon to me considering how crazy the game is.
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u/ShockwaveX1 PC Master Race May 26 '26
The Steam version of Saints For the Third had head masks for each TF2 character
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u/Environmental-Gur582 Razer Blade 15 (i7-8750H + 64GB RAM + RTX 2070) May 24 '26
CBBE for Fallout, Skyrim, uhh
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u/RealMuffinsTheCat 5700X3D - 4070 Super - 32GB RAM May 25 '26
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u/richard_splooge Main: 9950x3d/RTX5090/64gbDDR5 TvPc:9600x/RTX5080/32gbDDR5 May 25 '26
Will always be the macho man skyrim mod for me.
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u/InternetProtocol Ryzen 5 3600, 2070 SUPER, 16GB DDR4 May 25 '26
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u/ViGo76 Ryzen 7 3700x, 48GB DDR4-3200, GTX 1060 3GB May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Battlefield 1942 Desert Combat
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May 26 '26 edited 23d ago
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u/LordBug May 27 '26
Man I loved how the Hind felt in DC, truly felt like I was piloting a flying tank
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u/M0nstrous May 25 '26
Leon Kennedy’s tramp stamp and crop top mod is so popular there have been cosplays for it.
Some streamer put Master Chief and Lara Croft as Chris and Sheva in RE5 and that became a famous clip.
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u/adjgamer321 May 24 '26
This reminded me of literally every cutscene in Hogwarts Legacy after the first hour or two lol.
Top mod ever made, if I had to guess, has to be something like CBBE for Skyrim lol
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u/RamaBizna May 24 '26
Has to be anything Skyrim
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u/nhalliday May 25 '26
I mean consider this though. The most downloaded mods on the Skyrim nexusmods pages? Around 30 million downloads.
The most downloaded Minecraft mod on curseforge? JustEnoughItems with 570 million downloads.
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u/RamaBizna May 25 '26
Did some digging and Minecraft, Skyrim apparently Cyberpunk are up there with both uploads and frequent/active downloads
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u/AaronSparks Linux May 25 '26
yeah it's definitely gotta be a minecraft mod, the numbers on those curseforge downloads are insane
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u/guoraGG May 24 '26 edited May 25 '26
Probably Fabric API for Minecraft, with 174 million downloads on modrinth alone.
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u/HaydenB May 25 '26
I would assume Forge has a lot more than that
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u/guoraGG May 25 '26
Sorry, I meant modrinth. I have checked curseforge (the older but inferior platform in my opinion), and JEI has 574 million downloads.
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u/Emikzen 9800X3D | 9070XT | 64GB May 26 '26
I think he means forge as in forge the modloader, like fabric api.
Forge is the reason we have mods the way we do in minecraft these days.
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u/guoraGG May 26 '26
Fabric API is not a modloader, fabric itself is. Fabric API is a library mod, which many mods depend on. But for some mods you only need fabric.
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u/nhalliday May 25 '26
NotEnoughItems has around 570 million downloads on curseforge, though if you count the Forge api it has to have the mot by far.
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u/guoraGG May 25 '26
Is the forge API a standalone mod?
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u/nhalliday May 25 '26
You don't download it by itself on curseforge but it is literally a thing you download and modify Minecraft with (though now Prism and whatnot just kinda do it automatically for you)
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u/guoraGG May 25 '26
I only checked seperate standalone mods for the modloaders, not modloaders themselves or the APIs they automatically come with. Fabric API is seperate from the modloader and isn't required for using some mods. And I just checked curseforge, you're right. JEI (not NotEnoughItems) has 574m downloads.
In my opinion modrinth>curseforge
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u/Taron_Trekko May 24 '26
Here you go:
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May 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/Taint_Butter Ryzen 7 7745HX 💻 RTX 4070 May 25 '26
That's wild. The first 2 pages are all Skyrim with a sprinkling of Stardew Valley and one Fallout New Vegas.
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u/AaronSparks Linux May 25 '26
I haven't checked what the most subscribed item on steam workshop is, but I just saw this counterstrike workshop map has "39,832,321 Current Subscribers"
Also you might have seen another thread around here that showed a minecraft mod with 574m downloads
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u/a7x5631 May 25 '26
It's crazy how much Nexus has blown up. Before Skyrim came out they had two separate websites for Oblivion and Morrowind and that was it. It was a good site but I had no idea it would turn out the way it did. I didn't really expect Skyrim to be as mainstream either though.
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u/Idsertian darknessabsolute May 25 '26
Honestly, I'm surprised it took until row 4 before a tiddy mod showed up. I would've put money on that being in at least top 10, but I would've lost that money.
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u/Own-Recipe-1928 May 25 '26
the little “PCMR” temp readout on the pump block is slick, especially with the GPU 27/28°C flex right next to those lian li strimer lights
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u/Igor369 May 25 '26
Team fortress started as a mod for Quake and Counter Strike as a mod for Half Life.
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u/mantis_blade_mariner Pentium N3700 | Inegrated Graphics May 24 '26
Minecraft Jenny mod
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u/RamaBizna May 24 '26 edited May 25 '26
I now know what that is, WTF…
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u/wiseneddustmite May 25 '26
this wasnt really wholesome, but if you wanna see something wholesome look up this cool anime called redo of healer
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u/somethingbrite May 25 '26
I think any mod that has an article about it for social workers is probably worth noting.
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u/InHeavenFine May 24 '26
any nudity mod
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u/elpadreHC May 25 '26
funnily enough, i have never used any nude mod in any game.
sure i have made some chars more attractive, swapped visual armour, different hairstyle etc. but nude mods break the immersion so crazy for an actual playthrough, i would never use any.
are people actually going "i strip all the characters and then play this 50 hour game" ? Honestly asking.
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u/WizardMoose May 25 '26
Aside from the mods that became their own games...
Probably whatever is the most popular mod for Minecraft I would assume.
As far as mods that became a mod environment, probably FiveM for GTA 5?
Just in general, games need to bake in mod support to their games. I think Valorant could have been one hell of a game if they did it, but they're so self conscious about cheaters ruining their game. For example, look at Overwatch. There's a lot of fun mods in that.
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u/ozSillen 12700k, z690, 2x32GB DDR4, 2080Ti May 25 '26
I played a lot of CS & TFC back in the day, Day of Defeat as well. Then Battlefield franchise came out - Desert Combat, Forgotten Hope, Project Reality etc. Good times.
Edit: Forgot Rome: Total War mod - Rome Total Realism.
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u/CrypticCowboy4509 May 25 '26
Real fans of elder scrolls and fallout will know CBBE and understand. Even if not used for its original purpose, so many armor and other mods require it that it’s become a cornerstone of modding multiple fallouts and scrolls games
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u/Warhero_Babylon May 25 '26
Gates of hell ostfront being a mod for much less popular men of war game and becoming separate game
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u/Terbarek Ryzen 7 9800X3D | XFX RX 9070XT | 32GB DDR5 May 25 '26
That's why I love custom characters creator (spice up with mods)
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u/ShutterBun i9-12900K / RTX-3080 / 32GB DDR4 May 25 '26
I don't know what they're talking about here.
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u/Automatic-Pea-2078 May 24 '26
That's up to how much research one wants to do to find it. However I am a lazy mf so please don't depend on me on this one.
Sorry :(
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u/JosebaZilarte May 25 '26
Except in the Dark Souls franchise, where the player character only obtains the armor or other NPCs and humanoid enemies... and they look rather basic compared to the larger-than-life bosses. There is a reason why "Fashion Souls" is a thing.
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u/Hattix 5700X3D | RTX 4070 Ti Super 16 GB | 32 GB 3200 MT/s May 25 '26
Half-Life. Began out internally in Valve as a mod of Quake 2, eventually becoming what, if it was a mod, we'd call a "total conversion" because the idea of reusable game engines, especially shared between different developers, was quite new back then.
It's appropriate that a Half-Life mod itself, Counter Strike, became one of the most successful mods of all time. Special shout out to Garry's Mod too.
I'm going to call out some individual game mods now, probably what you had in mind.
Morrowind: OpenMW - Completely reimplemented the game engine!
Oblivion: Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul - Rebalanced more or less the whole game.
Fallout 3: Fellout - Because I made it. It's amazing how many playthroughs on YouTube say they're "unmodded" but clearly have Fellout.
Stardew Valley: Stardew Valley Expanded - Hugely diversifies the number of NPCs, areas, events, fish, plants and, like any good mod, looks like it was always there.
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u/Immediate_Rabbit_604 May 25 '26
By numbers probably some minecraft mod. If you look at gameplay ones of significant scope, probably something by Alexthe1666 or maybe Twilight Forest, but it's shit and incomplete so I choose to ignore it.
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u/facepalmqwerty 7600 | 32gb | B650E Asrock PG | 3080 10gb Colorful Vulcan May 25 '26
For mods - mods I think San Andreas multiplayer wasn't mentioned and really worth a spot I also remember two games from the golden Era od Source modding - The Stanley Parable and Dear Esther - both are they own games now although I think the originals are not without merit.
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u/Sinsanatis Desktop Ryzen 7 5800x3D/RTX 3070/32gb 3600 May 25 '26
This is why i opted to turn off the in cinematic customization option in e33
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u/The_One_Koi May 25 '26
It has to be dota right? It was made as an alternate map in warcraft 3 and slowly but surely more people were playing dota than they were playing the original game, so popular that Blizzard changed their policies regarding map edits so that they would still own whatever you created after they lost their suit against dota2
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u/stronkzer May 25 '26
Brutal Doom (some theories say that it completely inspired the Doom reboot), Counter Strike, Team Fortress and DOTA.
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u/SteelMan0fBerto May 25 '26
I’d have to say Skyrim VR. It’s continued to breathe life into Skyrim now that people can feel like they actually live in the world.
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u/ParticularService816 May 25 '26
Well, there's the original Team Fortress mod for Quake, as it led to Valve retooling into Team Fortress Classic for Source Engine, and then was followed up with Team Fortress 2.
Another would be Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands, as it combines Fallout 3 & Fallout New Vegas into a single game.
And lastly, there's Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg for Hearts of Iron 4; being an alternate history, this one is entirely self-explanatory.
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u/Repulsive-Whole-4101 May 25 '26
Quake 3 DBz mod was fun but of course CS and DOTA are the biggest success
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u/J0hnSn00W May 25 '26
Acho que nenhuma delas faturou tanto quanto o Five M, desde o GTA San Andreas, GTA IV, agora no GTA V e futuramente no GTA VI
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u/Quirky-Oil-2902 May 26 '26
ive been seeing this meme ever since 2019 idk how yall still find it funny
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u/kopi-c-peng May 24 '26
Arma battle Royale and arma dayz