exportconsthtml=`<p><strong>Update: On <a href="/news/article/capital-return" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">April 4, 2024</a> we announced that we had returned the remaining $800k in investor capital back to our investors to take a different path. <a href="/news/article/capital-return" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Read that announcement here</a>. This article remains here for archival purposes.</strong></p><hr><p>There are over 3 billion gamers worldwide, but only a small fraction ever go further and mod the games they play. Modrinth is here to bring modding to every player on the planet—all the while allowing mod creators to make a living off of it.</p><p>Since our founding in 2020 and up until a few months ago, Modrinth has been a purely volunteer project. In the past couple months, the Modrinth team has been more productive than ever. We've released the <a href="../two-years-of-modrinth" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Anniversary Update</a>, we're actively working on the launcher once more, and we're laying out plans for how to multiply Modrinth creator payouts.</p><p>The vision we have for the future of Modrinth is great, and right alongside that is the need for an amazing team to build out this vision. That's why we <a href="https://x.com/modrinth/status/1615416957905342472" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">recently announced</a> that <a href="https://careers.modrinth.com" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">we're hiring</a>—we've already come so far on just volunteer work, but for Modrinth to be sustainable and for its growth to be sustainable, we need to pick up the pace.</p><p>That's why we're excited to announce that we've raised a pre-seed round of funding led by <a href="https://www.makersfund.com/" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Makers Fund</a>, with investors including <a href="https://x.com/ryanmjohnson" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Ryan Johnson</a>, <a href="https://x.com/sthenc" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Stephen Cole</a>, <a href="https://x.com/PimDeWitte" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Pim de Witte</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/leechris1/" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Chris Lee</a>, and <a href="https://x.com/andreas" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Andreas Thorstensson</a> to accelerate development and expand to new horizons for Modrinth.</p><h2>What's next?</h2><p>We're thrilled to keep on building and iterating on Modrinth over the next few years. Here's a look into what we have in store over the next few months for Modrinth:</p><ul><li>A feature-packed launcher</li><li>Creator organizations (like GitHub), wikis, graphs (with playtime, views, downloads, etc)</li><li>More creator payouts, through the growth of Adrinth</li><li>Discovery/recommendation of mods (especially up-and-coming content)</li><li>Comments (with built-in moderation and spam protection)</li><li>[Redacted]</li></ul><p>Support for new games!</p><p>We are excited that we are able to build a product that will manage to grow us to sustainability and create the best modding experience for creators and users. Being able to pay ourselves and bring on new people is a big step in making that happen. There is still a lot to do, so let's get to it!</p><h2>Q&A:</h2><p>We know there might be some concerns so we included a short Q&A section below for some common ones. Feel free to ask in our <a href="https://discord.modrinth.com" rel="noopener nofollow ugc">Discord</a> if you have any more questions!</p><h3>Why does Modrinth need funding?</h3><p>Our main expense is and will continue to be salaries. The labor cost has always been the main bottleneck for Modrinth. Having paid employees will allow us to develop Modrinth faster, bringing Modrinth to a point of sustainability and growing the platform. For example, we're planning to release our launcher this year, and eventually we're hoping to expand into more games. Those won't be possible without having paid employees.</p><h3>Is Modrinth still community-first?</h3><p>We started and always will have the goal of creating a community-oriented, open-source modding platform. Simply put, there isn't any rea
