Modding.
Modding!
Takayuki's eyes began to shine.
He had found a breakthrough.
And that was to promote the development of mods.
Creating mods for a game is arguably the lowest-barrier method of game development.
Because the core logic of the game is already in place—as long as it's sufficiently open-source and customizable—players can surprise developers in endless ways.
The MOBA genre born from DOTA, Sengoku 3C, Counter-Strike, and Red Alert are among the most successful mods of all time.
These open games were practically made to serve as a playground for aspiring developers.
...
...
And at this moment, the BattleNet platform just so happened to be missing an open modding platform.
With a system like that in place, anyone would have the chance to showcase the gameplay ideas they've made.
"Bale."
"Yes, President?"
Bale had already noticed Takayuki's slightly excited expression and guessed that he'd probably thought of a way to rapidly expand game production.
Inwardly, he couldn't help but be amazed—no wonder this man was called the God of Games. In just this short amount of time, he'd already come up with a strategy to scale development.
"I'm going to give you a new feature. I want you to develop it as quickly as possible and launch it on the BattleNet platform."
Bale immediately began taking notes.
"First, take down these titles—StarCraft, Counter-Strike, and Stardew Valley. These are all games that are inherently open-ended in nature. We're going to roll out a new feature that allows players to freely modify in-game data. And if possible, we'll also try to make it easier for players to tweak values and basic program logic."
Bale's pen paused slightly, and he looked at Takayuki in disbelief. "President… isn't that basically handing over our source code? And if I'm hearing this right, players would be able to modify our code without worrying about copyright lawsuits?"
He couldn't believe these words were coming out of Takayuki's mouth.
Not long ago, the gaming industry had dealt with a minor wave of plagiarism.
But that trend was snuffed out early—crushed immediately by none other than Takayuki.
Since then, Gamestar had begun limiting access to source code, protecting the integrity of their games from tampering.
And their legal team? It was the strongest in the world. Ruthless, aggressive, and relentless. Anyone who dared copy one of their games would get slapped with a cease and desist immediately—followed by legal action until the infringing party surrendered.
That approach had already prevented countless blatant rip-offs and was even studied as a textbook example in legal and industry circles.
And now… Takayuki wanted to undo all that? To hand over the development and modification rights of certain games to the public?
Wouldn't that mean the modded versions might no longer even resemble Gamestar's own games?
Faced with Bale's shocked expression, Takayuki replied calmly, "Is there a problem with that?"
"Uh… well, we'd be giving up control of those games."
"I don't think that's a real issue," Takayuki said. "Some games should be kept under strict protection—because they represent our technical core. But games like Half-Life, Stardew Valley, or StarCraft have mechanics that any seasoned developer can easily understand. So why hide them? Instead, let's be transparent. Let the players mess around with them."
"Mess around? What exactly do you mean by that?"
Bale still didn't quite get it.
Takayuki knew that this world didn't yet understand the full significance of modding.
Mods drastically lower the entry barrier to game development, which is why so many iconic game modes in the future world rose to popularity in the first place.
Anyone with a spark of creativity could repurpose a game's base logic into something entirely new.
And when those niche ideas caught on, their creators would often grow more passionate about development—gradually pushing themselves to create more polished, complex, and original works.
Mods were the secret weapon of the PC ecosystem—something that console platforms couldn't hope to compete with. If they didn't capitalize on this strength, PC's market share would always remain limited.
Takayuki smiled and said, "There's an old saying—one stick breaks easily, but a bundle of ten is strong. Power lies in the collective. And in any large crowd, creativity will always emerge. I want those ideas to have space to bloom—not be stillborn because game development is too hard."
Bale still didn't fully understand.
But he figured that if it was coming from the President, there must be some deeper logic behind it.
Even if he couldn't understand it yet… he could always wait and see.
So he jotted everything down and asked again, "President, just to confirm—you want to release the source code of these games and allow users to freely modify game values?"
Takayuki nodded. "Correct. This is just an experiment for now. I want to see if it really can surface some truly talented players."
Then, after a brief pause, Takayuki added, "To lead by example, I'll go ahead and make a few mod demos myself. We can use them as tutorials—showing people just how easy it is to start modding."
As he spoke, Takayuki got to work right away.
He pulled up his computer and began tinkering.
The first step was to adjust the base code of Counter-Strike.
He enabled support for a handful of program-level and data-level modifications.
These changes would make it easier for him to build his upcoming mod.
"What kind of mod should I make…" he murmured, thinking for a moment before the idea hit him.
A zombie infection mode. Inspired by Resident Evil.
In Counter-Strike, all it took was a few tweaks to the core ruleset:
—Add a countdown timer.—When the timer hits zero, one player randomly becomes a zombie.—The zombie can then infect others within a limited window of time.
The logic behind this was simple. So simple that anyone who spent a bit of time with it could recreate the whole thing.