User-generated content (UGC) is slowly starting to appear in Techland’s evolving platform game.

When Dying Light 2 launched in 2022, it didn’t win us over. However, we can’t deny that Techland has committed to supporting and revamping the controversial sequel. Over the past four years, they have overhauled the parkour system, introduced Volatiles to Villedor at night, and added more momentum to combat. They have also added numerous new features, such as a New Game+ mode and replayable bounty missions. Although the game’s ambitious narrative goals were never fully realized, Dying Light 2 now has a much more solid foundation. The latest update allows players to expand on these foundations and brings significant improvements to the game’s modding and UGC features.

“Patch 1.28 is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time – opening Dying Light 2: Stay Human to more player creativity. It gives you new ways to play the game and invites you to create with us. The Breach is our way of opening Dying Light 2: Stay Human even more to UGC content and adding new gameplay ideas and different kinds of experiences,” writes Techland’s UGC program manager, Rafał Polito, in an article on the Dying Light website.

Essentially, this amounts to a combination of official Dying Light 2 mods and improved mod support. After completing the prologue, players can speak with two returning Dying Light characters, Tolga and Fatina, who introduce them to a wider world of user-generated content. These experiences include official mods, such as third-person view and low-gravity modes, as well as featured mods created by the community. Polito highlights a few examples, such as The Atomborne, which attempts to transform Dying Light 2 into a hellish Gothic Souls clone, and the upcoming Dead Circuit, which turns Dying Light 2 into a Dead Space clone with a cool look.

Polito stated that they chose the user-generated content (UGC) route because many people asked them to. UGC powers the biggest games in existence today: If you want to make massive amounts of money in the gaming industry, the best solution is to get the community to create new content for the game. However, this requires the necessary resources and community to turn the game into a platform.

Techland has the necessary resources, but the question remains whether the community is there. According to SteamDB, Dying Light 2 has a concurrent player count of just a few thousand. That’s a decent result for a primarily single-player game that’s four years old, but these aren’t the kind of numbers that would drive a Minecraft-style behemoth.

Source: PCGamer, Techland, SteamDB