We gave this project the name Vortex, and our lead developer Tanninhas been working on it along with our new Vortex developer Nagev to ensure that Vortex is powerful, easy to use, and accessible to a wide array of modders. If you’d like, you can get a breakdown of Vortex’s key features on our dedicated page.
After more than two years of development which involved an open alpha that started in January 2018, Vortex is now in a state where it is both stable and “feature complete”. That's not to say that we won't be adding plenty of new features to Vortex in the coming years, but the Vortex of today is one that will be a more than able mod management tool for the vast majority of mod users. We are therefore proud to roll out the Vortex beta to you, our community, in the hopes that Vortex will help you organise and fine tune your load orders and modding installations, as it has helped so many users during the alpha phase.
If you have a perfectly functioning load order and stable modded game then we highly recommend you do not move over to Vortex at this time. The main focus of Vortex is on making your game as easy to mod as possible, in the most stable way, with the least amount of effort and if your game is already stable, there's no point making even a small effort to move over. However, for many of you who have been plagued by mod conflicts and issues, or who are starting a new playthrough or who just want to try out something new, Vortex might be a great fit.
If you need help deciding whether Vortex is right for you, you can find out in our help center.
If you have decided for yourself that you want to give Vortex a try, you can download it here. We’ll also be updating anywhere on our website that points to Nexus Mod Manager.
Vortex beta
We’re releasing Vortex as a beta because there are likely to be more pesky bugs we need to squash, however, it’s currently very stable and we’re confident enough in both its abilities and its state to make it the primary mod manager of Nexus Mods.
The beta is not intended to last forever, we have a clear roadmap of where we want to be before we officially hit the 1.0 full release and we’ll be listening to your feedback along the way. It is our utmost and realistic hope that this beta phase will not last any longer than the alpha stage has lasted.
In preparation for this announcement, we’ve been hard at work writing some helpful documentation to explain Vortex’s various features. We chose to put this on the wiki so anyone in the community can add their own articles and advice for using Vortex, and to help us ensure the content is up to date.
If you make tools for modders or have an idea for a great extension for Vortex you can check out our development documentation here.
Nexus Mods API - Coming soon…
The beta release of Vortex is a major milestone in the future of Nexus Mods. With that in mind we have another project we’re working on in the background to announce, the Nexus Mods API.
To offer deeper integration with our website and services we will be opening our new API to the public in the near future. What this means is, 3rd party applications and websites will be able to access data from Nexus Mods in a more robust and modern way than they do currently.
At the moment, Nexus Mod Manager and Mod Organizer (among others) use our older hook to work with the site, but as we continue to bring our code base up to date these applications will need to be updated to use our new API. We won’t cut off support straight away though, we’ll be working with these developers to allow a fair transition period before the old systems are turned off entirely. Of course, older versions of these programs will no longer be able to download directly from Nexus Mods after this time, but they will still work for manual mod installations.
We’ll be bringing you more information on our API closer to the time, so stay tuned!
