Were you playing games through the late 90s and early 00s, by any chance? Because we've been here before. At least three of the most-played games on Steam right now came from mods.

It's been happening for years, almost decades at this point. In fact, I'd be willing to say that at least 50% of most games ever made were made by someone who used to mod other games for fun.

Most recently there's been Black Mesa, which is a fan remake of Half-Life in Half-Life 2's Source engine.

There's also The Forgotten City, which was actually a Skyrim mod first and was so popular the mod makers were approached by Microsoft to make their own game.

Most Source engine games are actually mods of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Counter-Strike started as a Half-Life mod.

The existence of engines like Unity and Unreal blurs this a bit. You used to see more full-conversion mods for games that make them into something else, because the engine was the hard part. Now that they’re available on very permissive terms, most hobbyist game devs will genuinely make a full game from an empty kit, and release it without players needing to mod a game like Half-Life or Quake.

But, having full ownership of that environment naturally means a lot of creators will want something back for their work. They have no choice but to shrug and accept it’s a free fan project when it’s built off a $60 game, but the story is different when that chain is gone. So most of this trend takes the form of indie game development.

I'd say maybe over 20 years ago until it starts?

Negative time, many games you know and love began as mods of other games.

Counter Strike, Warcraft 3 DotA, ARMA 3 PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Momentum Mod, ... All of these were mods that became so big they became their own games.

If you're strictly talking about platforms though, you need support from the original developers,or the source must be easily editable (like the minecraft java edition). At that point it becomes pretty common for huge mods to be made which eventually end up managing themselves. The problem is that you need a lot of money to actually make new feeling games. And developers can't easily ask for money for mods, so development time is quite limited.

Some have already tried that. There are some games where there's basically zero base game and the devs want the players to fill in the content. Since such games start out with nothing, no one makes mods for them, and so the games die in obscurity. Ever hear of S&box?

That said, the people behind RPGMaker have a lot of this covered. They provide a good stock of assets to let people build stuff out of the box. This lets people create content quick, which eventually brings in the people that know what they're doing, which results in good stuff.

Factorio was created because Kovorax didn't get a job at Minecraft...

Honestly, this is how I wish more of my favorite IPs would go. Elder scrolls and fallout especially, Bethesda couldn't write a story for a bad porno, let alone compete with some of the story mods in Fallout 4 and skyrim. Just streamline the developer tools into an easy to access plug and play system for mods and quit trying to sell us a $40 knock off of an existing mod on nexus.

Ya'll talking about modded games, and no one mentioned Fallout London.

The developers got tired of waiting for Fallout 5 and made it themselves.

I'm not exactly sure if this is what you mean, but I have a couple examples of fantastic community powered fan games that arguably eclipse their inspiration.

Pokemon Infinite Fusion: fan powered remake of Pokemon Fire Red that incorporates a fusion mechanic and has something like 600,000 high quality fan created sprites. They're now working on a version for Pokemon Emerald

Clone Hero: fan made guitar hero/rockband clone with support for tons of peripherals including drums and vocals, with a huge library of fan generated songs.

Dunno "rise", but certainly isn't unprecedented for mods or similar to get standalone releases. Black Mesa and UNLOVED both come to mind.

And if we stretch definition a little, to my knowledge, Super Bernie World, Luanti, and apparently now S&Box all allow being used as engines for making mods as standalone games.

More and more games seem to suck on thier own, but can be great with mods.

But back then, modded games weren’t anywhere near as common as they are now.

What are you talking about? What new games with proper modding tools are there? Nobody wants to mod Starfield compared to Skyrim, Most of you probably don't even know that there are modding tools out for Doom Eternal. CS server mods were effectively neutered by CS2's matchmaking and skins store. There's gooner mods for Capcom games and VR plugins I guess. Indie game engines ate the modding community's lunch.

Company-made games and standalone games aren't going anywhere any time soon. Its a different type of project than modding/creating for games like Half Life, Gmod, Minecraft, Roblox, or VRChat. Making games within other games limits what you can do, because you have no control over the engine, and said engine is normally focused on an specific "base" mechanics set. For example, in Gmod, this is an FPS game. Modders can change this gameplay, but the further you push away from it, the less work is done for you, and the more you're fighting the existing game. At a certain point, you may as well just make a game rather than a mod.

S&box is coming out in like a month so probably then

Well, I started playing Skyrim about 3 years ago, and I now have over 200 mods. It's almost as high quality graphics and sound as modern games, plus I have a huge choice of scenarios I can install. Wild stuff.

Cyberpunk 2077 might be next for me, unless I decide to play skyblivion!

You mean like Luanti? These platforms exist, but most people won't know of their existance. Game companies invest heavily in advertisement to reach potential consumers

Aliens: Total Conversion - 1994:

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Aliens_TC

We already have this, it's called a game engine. Godot does this fully, and Unity is company owned but offers a community store with its own ecosystem. Download one of them and start creating today! No company will hold you back.