Nexus Mods’ recent removal of custom skins that gave Captain America the heads of United States presidents Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama in Marvel Rivals caused a bit of a stir among the types who typically freak out about this sort of thing. As such, the popular mod repository is doing its best to combat the misinformation and subsequent harassment surrounding its decision.
“By removing the Trump mod, we are simply executing our existing file submission policies,” Nexus Mods said on X (formerly Twitter) on Jan. 8, referencing its 2020 decision to enforce a site-wide ban on “cowards with sock puppet accounts” uploading “provocative and troll mods” based on sociopolitical issues in the United States. “What has been overlooked in much of the conversation is that we also removed other mods featuring US presidents uploaded to the site for Marvel Rivals, such as Biden and Obama.”
The statement goes on to explain that, as a small company based out of the United Kingdom with no stake in the goings-on of the American government, Nexus Mods doesn’t wish to be used as a platform for political discussion about the United States.
“The Trump mod was reported to us and, in line with our [terms of service], we’ve been actively ensuring that any other American political mods are also removed from our site,” Nexus Mods said. “While we have the right to choose what we host on our platform, we are not the authority on what you do or do not decide to mod into your games, and these mods can be found elsewhere on other sites.”
And there’s the crux of the issue. Like the above statement mentions, several websites free of so-called censorship now exist to house these kinds of controversial mods. The community that really wants a Trump mod for Marvel Rivals therefore doesn’t need Nexus Mods, so it’s not clear why they’re still resorting to two-bit trolling when they could happily move on to greener pastures that cater to whatever belief is driving their desire for this mod.
Nexus Mods owner Robin Scott summed up the situation perfectly on Jan. 6, two days before the official statement went out on X, in the comments of a Reddit thread about “censorship” on his site:
We also removed the exact same mod with Joe Biden’s head at the same time (on the 2nd of January) to ensure there was no bias and because we don’t want to handle all the nutjobs that come out the woodwork whenever these mods get posted. Funny how the outrage-bait YouTubers don’t mention that, isn’t it?
Case in point, today, with all the nutjobs coming out of the woodwork sending us death threats, calling us pedos and all the other “wah wahs” that come with this ridiculous situation because some YouTuber told them we are only removing Trump mods.
It’s so dumb, and these people are so dumb, that I really cannot be fucked with it. I’m not expecting any of my staff to have to handle these whackjobs any more than showing them the door either. So we delete all the mods we see/that get reported to us on the topic, and all the people this upsets can trot-on because it’s really not worth our time or effort to care about.
In the United States, Donald Trump is about to be president again, and the Republican Party’s significant gains in Congress mean his opponents will be able to do very little to impede his hateful vision for the future. But because certain segments of the online right — in this case, the gamer contingent — can’t deal with the fact political power doesn’t necessarily impart cultural cachet, they’re apparently going to keep needling platforms like Nexus Mods with fake controversies. Fortunately, the website already has guardrails in place to nip these issues in the bud, and its leadership has the courage to face down what could end up being daily harassment for its decisions.
