Officially the best-selling game in January (in the United States), people have been talking about Dying Light more than just because of its controversies (including the recent DLC debacle and its staggered release). One aspect of the open-world zombie game that has been getting lots of traction is all of the wacky and wondrous things that players have been doing and discovering with it. Some prime examples include its very own Destiny-like loot cave, a Super Mario Easter Egg and one player who beat the game without using any weapons.

And many more players have been creating their own Dying Light fun using mods – modifications of the existing game's content. One problem with this, though, is that if developer Techland allowed mods to be used in the Be The Zombie PvP mode, those using mods could have an unfair advantage against other players who are using copies of the unmodified base game. To combat this they released a patch, but unfortunately their 'fix' removed mod support from both the single and multiplayer aspects of the game. Couple this with the takedown notices being mistakenly served to modders by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), who deemed their mods to be a copyright violation, and many modders felt put out.

After an apology and an explanation, both Techland and the ESA vowed to make amends, and so far they have. Understanding that many modders were upset by recent events, Techland reiterated their commitment to modding (noting that they'd been big on mod support with their Dead Island games) and promised that mod support would be making a return. They've now kept that promise and thanks to the latest Dying Light patch on PC, players will be able to mod once more.

In the Dying Light 1.4.0 patch notes, Techland writes:

"Game data integrity (modding)

• Games can be modded

• Modded games will not work online with original unchanged versions

• Modded games will work with other identically modded games"

It's definitely good news that Dying Light can be modded again and it's even better news that modded versions of the game will be able to play online together, but this may cause some frustration. If modded versions of the game will only work with versions that have all of the same mods installed, it makes it incredibly unlikely that Dying Light players will find others who have downloaded all of the same mods as they have. Finding a match would take some planning beforehand so maybe Techland will use the game's Steam discussion boards to help that happen.

Other additions in this patch include "significantly reduced RAM memory usage", "numerous general performance optimizations" and "resolved extremely low resolution textures on certain objects regardless of texture quality settings" though some players are still reporting sub-60 frames per seconds visuals despite the patch's fix. Some players may also be unhappy with the patch's removal of the weapon duplication glitch that we reported about last week; the glitch was never going to last but many will be sad to see it go.

Meanwhile, those who aren't affected by the return of modding or the performance improvements will be glad to know that in Dying Light's March update, the game will be receiving a Hard Mode.

Source: Steam