Venris, the mod creator behind Total War: Warhammer 3’s most ambitious mod, SFO Grimhammer 3, has urged fans to support human modders as the scene becomes polluted by vibe-coding AI bros.
Out of every mod available for the already-huge RTS game, SFO Grimhammer 3 has been the most ambitious by far. A total overhaul for the game, the massive mod is stacked with content and customisation options while pushing for more lore-accurate units over the base game.
The total overhaul definitely isn’t for everyone, but those who love the mod really love it. At the time of writing, the mod even houses a 20,000-person strong Discord group with fans discussing the total overhaul. It’s undeniably one of the most impressive projects in the Total War: Warhammer 3 community.
As the biggest mod for Total War: Warhammer 3, SFO Grimhammer 3 has been met with many clones over the years. However, now, with the rise of AI mods—similarly to the annoyingly poor AI emulators and AI recomps—the mod has been targeted by AI vibecoders looking to clone the total overhaul mod and add to it with poor AI-generated code.
In response to the frequent cloning, mod leader Venris “deliberately corrupted the mod” and threatened to make the project private if AI bros continue to clone their work. “Due to the growing number of unauthorized reuploads of SFO: Grimhammer III, and more importantly, the use of AI in the process, I have deliberately corrupted the mod to prevent it from functioning with such unauthorized uploads. If this situation continues to escalate, I will make SFO: Grimhammer III private,” they said at the time.
Venris explained that the work on the total overhaul mod has been “the result of nearly ten years of passion and love for this community and the fantasy world”. While the mod maker explained that don’t “permit anyone to take my work without permission”, they specifically add that using their work for AI purposes is even more offensive.
“Support modders, not AI,” they said. “When [the] update will be ready, it will be released on Steam as always. Nowhere else. SFO mods were, are, and always will be free for everyone as long as I am here. No paywall.”
In an update post, Venris announced that the mod had once again become public for fans, adding that AI should “support modding, not replace it”. The modder explained that anyone using AI for their mods should be knowledgable enough to use it as a support tool for their own projects, not using it to steal work by others and re-upload it with worse quality.
“I know that my actions will not stop those who choose to appropriate the work of other modders, but they have at least helped bring attention to a problem that is currently affecting the Steam Workshop of our beloved game,” the modder said. “For weeks, the Workshop has been flooded with a wave of modifications created entirely using AI. I sincerely hope that the right people will take action so that we can all continue to share our work without fear of it being taken away by others.”
It’s worth noting that every piece of AI-generated content is based on content stolen from somewhere. Modding as a hobby has been filled with some of the most dedicated, talented, and passionate fans in gaming, and now their work is being taken and modified without their consent by AI users that have no idea how to bug fix the work they’re stealing.
Outside of modding and the aforementioned recompilation community, AI vibecoders have also started to infect open-source homebrew projects, pushing veteran mod-makers away from the community. The reality is that AI vibecoded content is always of lower-quality compared to mods created by talented human modders.
