Titanfall Won't Support Mods At Launch

Mod culture is the defining cornerstone of creativity in the PC gaming arena. Many of the current and future franchises (across every gaming platform) has had some start in the modding arena, whether it was Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, Natural Selection, Defense of the Ancients or DayZ. Well, if you were an eager up-and-comer in the programming and creative design space hoping to get your digs into the inner workings of Titanfall, think again.

Gamespot covered the recent story of Respawn Entertainment's co-founder Vince Zampella confirming that Titanfall will not support mods at launch. Given the culture of anti-community integration at big publishing studios like EA, it's unlikely that mod support will ever arrive.

Responding to a user on Twitter who asked about mod support for the PC version of Titanfall, Zampella stated that...

Oh boy, doesn't that sound familiar?

One of the things that bothers me about this corporate-dig toward an all-digital future is that there doesn't seem to be any effort put into actually creating utilities or outlets in which the user gets to exercise more control. There's a lot of culture-restrictive utilities and services put in place so that users can record, upload, download and interact with whatever is available in the toy box at the center of the walled-garden.

The herding of consumers into a fenced off technological dictatorship is sickening.

Some gamers, however, might see Zampella's words as something to hold out on with an air of positivity, but need I remind anyone what happened when people pestered DICE for mod tools for Battlefield 3?

The reality is that mods will always interfere with the publisher's revenue agenda, which is why mod support was zapped clean out of the Call of Duty franchise and replaced with countless forms of DLC.

No one would be inclined to pay $15 for overpriced map packs when capable-minded members of the gaming community can make their own maps. No one will pay $20 for a weapon pack when gun enthusiasts roll out high-quality weapon modifications like the FAS: 2.0 mods for Garry's Mod (and those are righteously badass, by the way). Worse yet -- for most major publishers -- there's no reason for anyone to buy season passes for this kind of content when the community will roll out equal or better quality content than the developers.

Plain and simple: mods undermine the revenue stream and value of DLC.

For those of you thinking that DLC isn't that important, keep in mind that EA is being sued by their own stockholders over delaying the DLC packs for Battlefield 4 because it impacted EA's stock, since their revenue stream was adjusted to account for the delay of DLC.

A lot of times expansive gaming content is strategically centered around promoting a company's market portfolio, and rarely does it have anything to do with creative ventures being explored by the development team. A sad and depressing fact that now permeates much of the AAA business.

All this is to say that it would be a miracle that Titanfall isn't so closed off that dedicated members of the community are allowed to step forward and modify the game's assets to include their own modified Titan (Gypsie Danger, anyone?) or replace the soldiers with Master Chief and Soap McTavish avatars.

If Respawn Entertainment changes their stance on mods at some point, we'll be sure to let you know. Although given the track records of both Activision and Electronic Arts for being quite averse to user mods in their high-profile blockbuster titles, I tend to think that this stance will be as likely to change as Carson Daly is likely to give half-a-crap about hosting The Voice.