Nexus Mods first started offering Premium Membership as an option to users all the way back in 2007. Since then, it has been an invaluable source of income for the site that has allowed us to continue to host our services, hire staff, create NMM and Vortex, expand to over 1,300 more games and give back to mod authors via our Donation Points system, among many other things. Without it, the site simply would not exist.


Since we first started offering Premium Membership, our billing system (the process by which you purchase Premium Membership, view your invoices, etc.) has been handled by our Invision Board forums software and PayPal. To be frank, it's old, archaic, held together by duct tape and glue and was never really intended to be used by a site as big as ours. It's so delicate, we have not been able to update our Premium Membership pricing since 2013 because doing so breaks many different elements of the billing and Premium membership system which we have no control over as the code is not ours.


As part of our efforts to decouple as much of the site as we possibly can from our forums, we began work back in June 2020 to completely strip out our Premium Membership billing system and replace it with our own solution. Our aim is to make the process far simpler for users, provide all the information and functionality they need to manage their membership in the Nexus Mods user area, away from the forums, and to give us more control over the pricing and packages offered.


14 months later, we are finally going to be ready to launch this new system on the 3rd of August 2021. All elements of the new billing system will now be handled via the Nexus Mods user area, rather than via the forums, and the forum payment systems will be turned off.


Coinciding with this completely new system, we are making long overdue changes to our packages and pricing. From August 3rd, Nexus Mods will only have two Premium Membership options available to purchase:

• Monthly, billed at £4.99/month ($6.90/month*)
• Yearly, billed at £49.99/year ($69.20/year*)
  

*USD based on current exchange rates and subject to change.


Our new billing system will take all major cards and PayPal, whichever you wish, and they will be handled directly by our payment processor, Braintree, who are a Level 1 PCI compliant service provider. Nexus Mods will not directly process or store any sensitive cardholder data.


All new memberships will automatically recur at the end of your billing period and our user area will show clear information detailing when your membership is due to expire and when you will be charged again. Cancelling your subscription at any time, for any reason, will be a very simple two-click process and handled automatically without the need to jump through hoops.


This change marks the first time we're increasing our prices in over 8 years. Inflation alone has reduced the purchasing power of our currency by 17% since 2013. But these new prices also take into account a number of factors that have changed over the past 8 years since we last updated our prices, including the fact we're now providing additional Premium Member download CDNs and download locations, the ever increasing costs of our platform and the implementation of our Donation Points system which gives back to mod authors who use our site. We have not hidden the fact we want to put more money into our DP system and we intend for any increase in revenue from these Premium Membership changes to also be reflected in the amount we put into the DP fund.


To make the system a lot simpler, we have streamlined our membership offerings by removing the Supporter, 3 month and 6 month memberships. After much consideration, we have also made the difficult decision to remove the Lifetime Premium Membership (membership that never expires) as a purchasing option. While this option has provided a great deal to our users over the past 14 years, it is becoming less and less sustainable as the cost of keeping the site online increases and the years continue to roll by. We're thankful to anyone who has taken us up on our Lifetime Membership option up to now but, due to the nature of running the site as a longtime service, we incur ongoing and recurring costs that we need to continue to plan for in the long term and this is why we have decided to remove Lifetime Premium Membership as something you can buy from August 3rd.


Anyone who has bought or received Lifetime Premium Membership before we change over to the new system on August 3rd will continue to have that membership after we change over - that is, all Lifetime Premium Memberships bought before we release the new system on August 3rd 2021 will of course be honoured after this change. Thus, please take this as due notice that you only have a couple more weeks in which to purchase and take advantage of Lifetime Premium Membership from Nexus Mods before it is removed as an option for good.


Similarly, anyone with an active membership which is due to expire after August 3rd will see no changes to their expiration date (i.e. if you bought 6 months of Premium Membership in June 2021 on the old system it will still expire in December 2021). Your account will have the Premium Membership you paid for. If it doesn't, something has gone wrong so please contact us at [email protected] and we'll be happy to sort it for you as soon as possible (and we normally throw in some free extra Premium time for your hassle as well!).


Our "Supporter" system will not change and any Premium Members whose time expires will still be put into the "Supporter" group where they will continue to receive the benefits of ad-free browsing on the site, a speed cap increase and a couple of other smaller perks in perpetuity. You simply will not be able to buy this package any more.


Our old billing system will remain visible for any users who previously bought Premium Membership so they can still access the invoices for purchases made via the forums between 2007 and 2021.


For a short while after this system releases it will not be possible to gift Premium Memberships to other users like you were able to in the past. We hope to plumb this into the new system in the not too distant future, but it simply did not make our initial launch.


Unfortunately, our new billing system is not compatible with the old one and anyone who currently has a recurring subscription setup in PayPal will have their subscriptions automatically cancelled. We will attempt to email affected subscribers about this change, however, PayPal's systems are antiquated to say the least and do not provide an easy way of doing this. We will do the best we can to send out an email regarding the cancellation with the tools available to us, but it is not something we can guarantee. Any Premium Membership time paid for before August 3rd will be honoured so you will not miss out on any time. Your Premium Membership will simply expire on the due date without being automatically renewed.


I want to say a big thank you to all our Premium Members who help us to keep the lights on and the servers running, we couldn't do it without you. We're very much looking forward to getting this update out the door as it ticks off another important part of the site that we are successfully decoupling from our forum software, meaning we have to rely on it less and less, while greatly improving the user experience of the Premium purchasing process for all and finally allowing us to put Premium Membership at a price point which we think reflects the value of the service offered.