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vimes

Desura, Steam like for mods

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This was release mid-2010 but there's no mention of it here, so I thought I'd share ...

Desura is a portal for mods (most of them free) which looks a hell lot like Steam and is supported by Valve, Rockstar and LucasArts, recently joined by Crytek. The beauty of this portal is that it makes trying mods very simple : put the mod in your cart, download it and a shortcut will appear in your game list. No manual installation, no console, no fucking up the original files ... it's pretty great.

It also interface pretty well with Steam : upon requesting a mod for a game you already purchased there, it will detect automatically it provided that you installed it and ran it once. For Valve products, it will also cue some download that are needed (like the Source SDK).

Of course, it's not perfect :

  • the downloader threw at me very obscure errors when my connection got cut or when I tried to login before having confirmed my subscription
  • they also have a full-game store which dilutes a bit the original intent
  • even though it's supported by ModDB, only a fraction of what's on the site is actually downloadable.
  • the integration with Steam is so good I wish you didn't have to open an account on Desura at all.

but it allowed me to play Call of the Fireflies anf Raining Day for Crysis, as well as Dear Esther in about an hour; which I would have shied away from if I had to set all those up manually.

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I installed it recently for a Half-Life 2 mod (Dissolution), but haven't played the mod yet. Looks useful, but the buttons and interface are somewhat confusing. For example, you click "Play" to install the thing.

Would be nice if it would support more games (I guess that's coming probably). I have a mind for playing some Stalker mods.

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I just downloaded this in order to install the Mechwarrior Crysis Wars mod, but it doesn't have any mods for Crysis Wars. So a bit useless for me. Like another Steam without the gaming functionality.

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I've been hearing about this for awhile and so I finally downloaded it the other night. I didn't play around too much with it, but it's very Steam-y so that's good, I guess? It seemed to download and launch Dear Esther nicely, so that's good as well. Good. But overall, it just makes me wish this was somehow IN Steam.

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I just downloaded this in order to install the Mechwarrior Crysis Wars mod, but it doesn't have any mods for Crysis Wars. So a bit useless for me. Like another Steam without the gaming functionality.

Mechwarrior has just been uploaded!

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paid mods?

somehow that doesn't compute for me

Not to bump this for no reason, but it's also client for buying/selling indie games on top of acting as a means to get mods.

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