Changes to how we review community game extensions

[insomnious]

Hi all

We’ve recently been inundated with game support extensions for Vortex and it’s made us take a step back to look at how we review these. We continue to have the issue with extensions being added that don’t work and don’t provide an adequate user experience but we do work closely with the authors to get these extensions up and running to a basic level as quickly as we can. This is time consuming with our limited resources and so if there are ways we can streamline processes, we are going to take them.

The extension review process is important because until we have reviewed it, it can’t be manually added to our manifest file. This file is what Vortex uses to know what extensions are out there and what games are supported. We have a responsibility to Nexus Mods users that when they are using Vortex to manage their games, extensions make sense regardless of whether they are community created or built by us. 

The below changes are only applicable for Game extensions, and not for Themes, Translations or Tools.

• We are utilizing more of GitHub’s features to automate and streamline what we can. As we use GitHub for nearly everything Vortex related, we are now using it for our game extension reviewing. This allows us to have a transparent conversation from start to finish with the author and all under a single GitHub issue. Because of this, a GitHub account is now needed to submit an extension for review and we won’t automatically be checking every extension that is uploaded to the site.
• When the extension author is ready and they’ve uploaded it to Nexus Mods, they fill in a form on GitHub that signals to us that the review process is ready to start. The form has links to the new documentation to help package, test and submit the extension in order to cover as much as possible before we manually take a look.
• We will also be placing game extensions under moderation while we are reviewing them in order to minimize user downloads before we’ve had a chance to review. We will be contacting authors at this point as well so they are aware of what is happening and why.
• We’ve started the mighty documentation project of 2024! We know our technical documentation isn’t great but we have started the project to check everything and migrate it to GitHub Wiki so it’s all in the one place and not spread across 3-4 different places. This is going to take a while but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

We hope these changes aren’t too disruptive and at no point do we want to dampen the passion people have for developing extensions or modding games. We believe these changes are for the best and will also provide better opportunities to learn how to develop for Vortex and provide a better experience for the user. Here are some links to what's been mentioned:

• Submit a game extension for review (GitHub Issue Form)
• How to Package and How to Test a game extension (GitHub Wiki)
• Example extension review (Alan Wake 2) with author conversation (GitHub Issue)

Thanks and happy modding!

insomnious and the Vortex team

[ChemBoy1]

Thanks for this update. I really appreciate you guys working with extension developers in the community to make sure we get things right. I have learned a lot from you and @Nagev. I don't take the time and effort you provide to get things working for granted.