Almost every video game is enriched by community mods. Some mods have become so well-known and popular that they became standalone games, like DotA 2 or PUBG: Battlegrounds. Alongside these massive successes, there are countless mods that take a different, somewhat risqué direction. The best platform to download mods will soon have to verify your age.
Which platform is it? The site NexusMods.com has been the home base for mod enthusiasts for many years. The website boasts over 700,000 mods for many games, including classics like Skyrim, Cyberpunk 2077, or the indie hit Stardew Valley.
Since the dawn of the modding era, there has also been a category of mods that are intended for adults only. The current measures to protect minors from this content, as on many other websites, are rather modest. In your account options, you can set whether you want to see adult content at all, with censorship, or not at all.
This security measure will no longer suffice in the near future.
What has changed? On January 17, 2025, a law was enacted for the Online Safety Act (legislation.gov.uk) that requires age verification for adult content for every company in the UK. There will no longer be a simple click of “Yes, I am over 18”. The official text of the law states:
Age verification or age estimation must be designed and implemented in such a way that it is particularly effective at accurately determining whether a specific user is a child or not.
By July 25, 2025, every provider of adult content must implement this age verification.
Furthermore, the EU law DSA (Digital Services Act) states that a high level of safety, privacy, and protection must be ensured for children and adolescents (fsm.com). Due to these two laws, Nexus Mods is obligated to promptly introduce a reasonable age verification.
The options to verify age
How does Nexus Mods want to verify the age of its users? In their post on Nexus Mods, they have only mentioned that they are working behind the scenes on a feature to determine age. Since they adhere to the DSA of the EU and the Online Safety Act of the UK, they must rely on better verification than just an age query.
There is already a project from the EU Commission developing a digital wallet in which you can store your ID and driver’s license in an app in the future. With this “European Digital Identity Wallet,” you will then be able to identify yourself online and complete the age verification. However, the wallet is not expected to be ready before the end of 2026.
How age verification will ultimately look at Nexus Mods remains to be seen. Nowadays, mods from the gaming world are indispensable, and the latest installment from FromSoftware, Elden Ring: Nightreign, also offers a lot of community content: Elden Ring Nightreign: Can you install mods?
