Mods can extend the life of a game and result in an ever-growing community. Developer Firaxis hopes that will be the case with XCOM 2, as it plans to support modding in the upcoming sequel.
In an interview with IGN, Creative Director Jake Solomon and Lead Producer Garth DeAngelis discussed the company's focus on modding and how players will gain access to all of the available tools to come up with fantastic creations.
According to Solomon, Firaxis plans to release the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and the editor the designers themselves used to make the game.
“People will see the gameplay source, all the scripting,” he said. “This is the code that makes the game what the game is. Here's the editor and all the assets that went into this game.”
XCOM 2 also includes Steam Workshop support, so fans who want to easily install and manage mods will be able to do so with little hassle. It's all in an effort to extend the life of the game so players keep coming back to it.
Even without proper mod support in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, some dedicated individuals created the Long War mod, an impressive reworking of the game with new classes, features, and plenty of other content. I can only imagine what people will create with a full suite of modding tools.