Modding can ‘reenergise’ retro gaming, says Sega Europe

Allowing players to modify classic games can help rejuvenate piracy-hit retro gaming.

That’s according to Sega’s James Schall, talking after the launch of the Sega Mega Drive Classics Hub. The Hub opened on April 28th on Steam, and over 350,000 Mega Drive titles were sold in just three weeks.

But far from just re-release the older titles, Sega is allow fans to alter the game with modifications.

Mods are a smart way to work with retro content because they may be games that have not been touched in maybe ten years but people still love them,” Schall says.

He added: If consumers want to find something, it’s not that difficult to go on the internet and try and download it illegally. Whereas I think giving people an opportunity to play games and alter them just reenergises the whole platform.”

We had a lot of discussions internally about modified content and ROMs,” continued Schall. There’s never really been a way for us to officially endorse that. We felt that with the Steam Workshop, we were able to do this in a way that also enabled us to have a little bit of control on what’s going on.”

Schall also added that other publishers have approached Sega about adding their content to the Hub: We want to look at maybe doing some different platforms, as well, but all of that needs to be thought through, discussed and not rushed.”

He concluded: We think it’s very important to allow some very smart gamers and community members out there to play within our space and maybe break some of the limitations we had while in development. Allowing them to play and tweak and adjust and maybe fix the game in a way that they want to play just opens up a whole creative process beyond the development team. That’s really something that Sega is proud of.”