Verified authors

Coming soonThis is not available yet. The page below explains what it will be and why it is not open — nothing here can be used or bought today.

Verified authors do not exist on modsdrop.com yet. There are no accounts of any kind here, no verification form, no queue and no badge on any file page. Everything hosted at the moment comes from my own library and was uploaded by me. This page sets out what a verified badge would be for and how I think it would have to work, so the plan is on the record before it is built. None of it is a promise.

Why a name on a file page matters

Mod players have learned to be careful with file hosts. The usual story goes like this. Someone takes a mod that was released for free, wraps it in an installer, adds something the player never asked for, and puts it on a host that pays uploaders for downloads. The player ends up with adware, and the author gets the blame in comments on a page they do not control.

No download page fixes that by itself. The scan state on a file page tells you whether that file trips any engine. It does not tell you whether the file is the one the author actually made. The question a player wants answered is simpler: did the person who made this mod put it here? A verified name, linked back to the author’s own page, would answer it.

What verification would mean, and what it would not

It would mean one thing: that I had checked that the person who uploaded a file was the author, or was distributing it with the author’s permission. That would be the whole claim.

It would not be a quality mark, and it would not be an endorsement from me. It would not replace the scan state, which I intend to keep showing on every file page whether a name is attached or not. It would not mean I had read the code inside an archive. An author can be genuine and still ship something broken.

What proof would look like

The only proof worth much starts at the author’s end. Pointing at somebody else’s page proves nothing, because anyone can point. That page has to point back. In practice I expect a link from the author’s own release page, project site, or account on the site where they normally publish, aimed at the file here or at whoever claims it.

Not every author has a page like that. Some release only inside a game’s own workshop, some through a closed community, some through a private Discord. So there would have to be other routes. A message from the contact address printed in the readme of an existing release would be one. A line added to the next release the author pushes themselves would be another. Every route would have the same shape: a change made somewhere only the real author can write.

Team mods would make it harder. Who speaks for a team, and what happens with work built on someone else’s base under a licence, are questions I have not answered.

What an author would get beyond a badge

A badge on its own is thin. My intention is that verification would be the gate to the useful part: control of your own files, so that a new version could replace an old one without breaking the page people already link to; the download figures for your files; and, if uploading opens to other authors, a share of what the advertising earns.

I am not going to put numbers on that here. Ads are not running on modsdrop.com at all yet. No rate and no minimum have been decided, and I have not settled whether payment would follow downloads or what the ads on a file page actually earn. It depends on what the site earns once ads run, and I do not know that yet. A figure I might not keep is worse than no figure. When it is decided I will write it down in full, with the workings.

Stopping somebody claiming another person’s work

This is the part that would decide whether a badge meant anything. None of it is running. As I see it now, it would need all of the following.

• Proof that originates with the claimed author, not with whoever asks for the badge.
• Checks done by hand. I am one person, so the honest description is slow rather than instant, and I will not quote a turnaround I cannot hold to.
• A file page that says what the name rests on, so a reader can judge the evidence instead of trusting a tick.
• A way to challenge it. Better proof wins, the name comes off, and the file goes back to unattributed while it is sorted out.
• Re-upload reports from a verified author looked at first. The DMCA route is open to everyone today and would stay open either way.

Open questions

• Whether the shown name should be the handle an author already publishes under, or something they choose here. I would not want to require a real name.
• Whether verification would sit with the author, or have to be confirmed for each file.
• What would happen when an author leaves the scene, or asks years later for their files to go.
• How much of the evidence could be published without exposing personal details.

Where this stands

There is nothing to apply for and no queue to join, and I cannot say when there will be. If something of yours is hosted here and you want it removed, credited differently, or replaced with your own copy, write to me at [email protected] or through the contact page, and I will deal with it by hand. If you think the approach above is wrong, that is worth hearing too.