DayZ developer plays down DICE dev's belief that modding is in decline

DayZ developer Matt Lightfoot has played down previous comments from DICE's Patrick Bach that suggest the modding scene is in decline.

In an interview with AusGamers, Lightfoot said that DayZ - which itself is a mod of Bohemia's shooter Arma 2 - is still enjoying new players. "We’re still coming to terms with some of things," he beamed.

"People are still streaming DayZ, and getting thousands of followers every night, and this is on a buggy mod for a three year old game -- we just didn’t think it was going to happen."

On Bach's belief that the mod scene is in decline, Lightfoot added, "The exec producer on Battlefield: Bad Company said something along the lines of “modding is dead”; well we certainly buried it alive didn’t we.

"I loved ArmA because of the customisability: you could download a mod and get a new aircraft -- there was so many mods for it, and that’s what kept me playing. I’ve sunk thousands of hours into ArmA before DayZ even came about, and it expanded the lifecycle of the game indefinitely.

"So I certainly don’t think modding is dead. When you look at Half-Life and Black Mesa on the Source Engine, these things are huge games. So I don’t think it’s likely to die in the foreseeable future."

For the record, Bach's quotes were made around Battlefield 3 and weren't made to attack the mod scene. In fact, he seemed quite down about it in his interview with GamePlanet.

Said Bach, "It’s sad to say. We’ve seen some cool mods but since games are getting more complicated to build, it’s also getting more complicated to mod them, so it’s a declining trend as we see it. Sad but true."

What do you think? Is modding in decline? Let us know below.