Since 2002 ModDB and IndieDB have been helping developers promote their craft to our amazing community of gamers. Today we reach 7.7million people who download over a petabyte of content every month. It has been an amazing journey and more than we ever could have imagined, and we aim to stay online forever.
of our visitors use adblock
However a challenge that all web communities face today, for better or worse is a dependence on advertising. Our aim has always been to show as few, as classy and relevant advertising as we can and we continue to fight that battle. But with adblock penetration exceeding 50% this is a challenging task. For large companies like Google this isn't a problem, because they pay adblock to allow their ads by default. But for us we are left in a tricky place.
Adblock or not we still love yoooou and will always welcome all visitors, but if you don't mind seeing ads every now and then, we ask for your support by whitelisting ModDB.com and IndieDB.com.
If you like the site, we are testing out a subscription system which you can join above. In return you will see no ads for a year, and we offer a warm fuzzy feeling that you are helping us feed the beast (the 15 servers we have pushing out content). We welcome all suggestions so please don't hesitate to share - our aim is to give all game and mod developers a voice free from editors/gatekeepers, as we succeed when we help you succeed.
UPDATE: responding to are our ads safe
So a lot of people in the comments are saying they would like to whitelist us (thanks!) but want to know if our ads are safe, don't play noise or do annoying things. I just want to respond to this by saying we value our community above all else, which is why we work with Gamer Network on all ads. Our policy is to whitelist and only traffic acceptable ads. You should never experience ads which don't comply with these rules, as we want people to love browsing here and for the ads to complement your experience not push you away. We hope more sites follow our lead, so you feel good about whitelisting us and other deserving sites on the internet.
I considered whitelisting the site. Didn't take me long to realize how terrible an idea it was, since I frankly don't care about anything the content providers want to shove in my face with ads. Until I have a good reason, I'm never removing Adblock or whitelisting any site, and even then it would have to be a REALLY good reason.
On a side note, I think it would be swell to add a category or something for the "Premium" games, AKA the ones that can't be directly downloaded without paying. I fell for the stupid bait-and-switch too many times.
Look moddb, I would love to whitelist your page. The problem is that the ads are too resource intensive and intrusive. ******* hell, I don't want to listen to the same lines about a miraculous antimycotic for your toes whenever I accidentally hover the mouse over it. Moreover, they tend to crash either Firefox or Flash player or make everything laggy.
So consider that perhaps I'm not the only one with this problem.
ok....... i wanted to give moddb an other try. so i disabled adblocker and reloaded the page.
the first thing i get is a big almost screen sized popup. WHY why would you do such a frustrating add, yea that's why 50% of your visitors use addblocker.
i have whitelisted other sites that do not use vid or popup adds. but this is going to far.
Whitelisted!
if only the ads were about things i wouldnt mind seeing like Lego, marklin or matchbox(do we still have this?) but no internet ads are always about trashy non-sense that you cannot possibly advertise in the material verse without facing sanctions upfront.
Im very sorry but my AdBlock has to remain up, i just cant stand those non-sense ads.
Ill try to spare a few coins thou, whenever if i get myself some excess. ;p
I whitelisted this site. My only request is that you keep the video adds (especially the ones with sound that force play) to an absolute minimum. Those adds slow down my browser considerably to the point where I can't even navigate a web page or it will take over a minute to load a page. Sometimes it crashes my browser outright and that is what prompted me to get adblock. That's all I ask. =)
We try and work with the ad providers to ensure these types of ads are avoided, please report auto popup / page take overs or auto playing sound blasting adverts here.
Moddb.com
I disabled my adblock after seeing this. Then within minutes was blasted with a loud obnoxious ad with sound. Immediately turned it back on.
That's all well and good, and in principle I have no problem supporting you, however I also use noscript and ghostery alongside adblockplus, and ghostery alone reported 71 (yes, that's correct) tracking sites on ModDB..
So come on! Don't ask nicely, then throw your users to the wolves..
Trackers and dataminers are scum. Play fair and I'll watch reasonable, relevant ads. However, invite a million parasites to feast on my browser, or show me horrible granny ads or loud, unpleasant crud, and I will block or go elsewhere.
I think I'd rather pay, to be honest - I don't want scum in or on my pc, that's why I block and disable them. You are asking me to let them infest my machine with their toxic, invasive crap - thanks, but nope. You wouldn't want it on your pc, would you? Well then...
My mistake, I think only 19 were invasive trackers, the remainder may just have been advertisers. Still - 19 is 19 too many!!
Is it counting social media linkbacks as trackers?
What happens after I click "subscribe"? Do I get a bill? Does this renew automaticly after 1 year?
ok guys i just disabled adblock on this site, thanks for what you do!
I don't visit this site frequently. I found great indie game here. Thanks for that. And I will make sure if I visit again, my adblock will be off. Whitelisted from now on! ;)
I turn off adblock for this site. The problem is that many videos doesnt work anymore. I click many times on start until video displayed correct, but then started advertising. Do you think that 1 minute of advertising for 2 minute video is normal?! Sorry, im not turning off adblock anymore.
I didn't want to read through the entire comment section, but I always thought a neat idea would be to let modders pay some $ to run an ad on your site. IE $5/month for a simple banner add that runs on the main page, for example.
As long as there are video ads that start out unmuted, I will not whitelist this site. Nothing freaks me out more than an ad video suddenly starting.
Well, I will try to. Whitelisted.
When the ads are actually looked over by the moddb staff and determined to not be noisy, invasive, or laggy, I will whitelist the site. I turned them on briefly today and I'm not impressed with this site's ad screening process.
The animated adverts kill my computers' performance.
MODdb uses 10-35% of the RAM during use. I have no issue with adverts, but the animated ones are killer to my PC. I can't yet afford a better PC. Any ideas on how I would improove performance?
I whitelisted, but blacklisted again because of all the stupid autoplaying videos. As someone who makes money off online advertising in the same way as you guys, I feel your pain, but I'm never going to whitelist you unless you stop the irritating autoplay video ads
I can be reasoned with considering adblock. First off, Google Analytics is unacceptable and I will always block it with Ghostery. Id much rather see the use of Piwik for statistics.
Secondly, Google Ads are junk ads. Get ads that are non-tracking but relevant, meaning you, the ModDB staff can pick out adproviders that gives ads that should overall appeal to the ModDB audience without tracking individual users. Perhaps ads for games (Moddable games!) as an example.
Adblock whitelisted with no hesitation and great pleasure, Always whitelist site you respect and support whatever level of ad invasion they have (flood forum for such issue :)
Whole network whitelisted actually (indieDb, Desura)
Thanks for 'Fairblock'
Disabled adblock :)
Subscribed also, like you say it's a catch 22. A few of the adds completely ruined the site "experience", like others have said annoying flash players and others that dominated the page. IMHO this site needs to survive and if that means a subscription, then so be it. Anyway goodluck untangling this :)
No, MODDB, i have no any intentions (or reasons) to watch 17-27 seconds playing advertising to get access to unknown movie uploaded to this site.
I better close the moddb page and ask author to upload his movie on youtube next time.
I know I whitelisted this site in the past but couldn't remember why I turned it on...
Well, thing is, I just did it again and was instantly reminded of it: your ads flash, blink and are way too hostile. I ask you to meet me halfway, moddb! Also, they're in Flash which has a tendency to make Firefox... unstable
By the way, it's the number one reason Firefox crashes? Actually, I think Mozilla said "plugins" but you get the hint.
Thanks for the reminder. I whitelisted your site in my other browsers, and I accidentally had two going for Chrome - Adblock Plus and Adblocker Pro(which tries to look like ABP but is awful).
I'll be subbing soon, video ads are awful and have no excuse to slow my system down so much.
I think many people would turn off adblock if you change flash banners on something static. In my case with blocker page loads five time faster.
Just a question : if I switch off my Adblock protection, does ModDB swith off its current INVISIBLE tracking ?
Indeed, another security and privacy tool for my computer (Ghostery) detected that ModDB is now using many WEB BUGS (Intergi, AddThis, Quantcast, ScoreCard Research Beacon ... and naturally Google Analytics).
Proof that confidence in web sites must be limited and that filtering tools (and not only AdBlock : the must for Firefox is RequestPolicy) are essential for privacy.
If you remove video ads I will disable ad-block on this site. video ads are disruptive and obnoxious
Thank you for wonderful site. I whitelisted it in all my adblocking plugins.
And thanks a LOT again for not being greedy like Steam :)
i have no idea how to whitelist. i did add two @@ symbols before www.moddb.com,, nothing happens, i don't see ads.
I used to own adblock but it doesnt work anymore but when i did i had it disabled on ModDb
I'm short on cash at the moment, but the 10 bucks a year doesn't sound too bad if it helps one of my favourite sites ;)
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I always disliked ads, as they pop up and make noise, hard to close them etc.
With the subscription we got a nice way to support you, so mods can be hosted free ;)
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I turned off uBlock0.
Can you set the min-height of the ad spot? It's annoying to see the page get bumped down 80 pixels after opening every link -.-
I'd like to remove AdBlock for modDB as I did with a few other websites. I don't care as long as it's just ads for trivial things like clothing or hardwares, even region locked (I'm browsing from France). However some are quite disturbing like weight loss ads or dating sites. I think it depends on the streams allowed to display ads. Things like Advert Stream are a nuisance, but I think Ad Choices is ok.
Just because I don't see ads on my monitor doesn't mean you lose money. You make money on people who click the ad, and the website pays you per click, not per month. If I never click the ad, you never get money; therefore, if I never see the ad you don't lose money.
Subbed. The ads are too much for me on a slow connection but, I want you guys to stay around. Best mod site ever!
Thank you and good luck.
I have absolutely nothing against your site getting funding.
But i did get adblock just for this site alone you know why ?
Go and try to look at screenshots. I don't have bad connection, but that ad loading is moving the site up and down so heavily it is so f.... annoying.
So make it so that your web wont rescale with loading of the ads and everybody might actually disable it.
"Adblock or not we still love you, and if you love our site please consider whitelisting us so we can continue to promote awesome mods forever."
oy vey please give us shekels
I would gladly whitelist you, I even did it some months ago but as many people have already mentioned, the video ads made me block your ads again. It's just so annoying to have videos autostart with sound, especialy if you open several moddb pages on mutliple tabs like me.
whitelisted.
sorry, had no idea till now :)
You hit me right in the feels with this one.. Ok ads.. This time you win.