Deus Ex and the Importance of Mods for Game Preservation

Personally, I never had any issues running Deus Ex on a modern system. But seeing how, “works on my machine,” isn’t exactly the comeback some people seem to think it is, it’s always good to have options. Which leads us to this PC Gamer article spotlighting one Marijn Kentie and his custom launcher that makes Deus Ex play nice with a variety of modern hardware.

The article also points out that as the industry keeps moving forward, game publishers should be taking note of these kinds of efforts. Which makes sense, considering enthusiasts like these are the only thing keeping certain classic titles playable these days.

Whether it’s Wesp5’s perennial Bloodlines patch, the Circle of Eight modpack for The Temple of Elemental Evil, or the Restored Content Mod for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, plenty of great RPGs would require a fair bit of percussive maintenance if not for the modders supporting them.

Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the article to get you started:

“I was just happy to teach myself something and be able to play the game,” he says. “And also, of course, allow others to play it. I don’t really feel like there’s any injustice in that I have to support a game someone else is selling. However, I do have to admit that the actual support part isn’t my favourite—answering emails from people, or trying to track down issues they have with their systems.”

At a certain point, trawling through a player’s log files or installing different driver versions to nail down their problem begins to feel more like work than a hobby. “But that’s the risk you take by putting something out there for people to use,” Kentie says. “I’ve never thought, ‘I wish the publisher would contact me or pay me.’ Although it is kind of strange how many games are sold without any fixes, or use a lazily included version of DOSBox.”