There have been some rather alarming reports of mods being taken down by spurious Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) claims. There have been some big mods, huge mods, such as Road to 56, that have been attacked. What can you do, as a mod user, to ensure that you don’t either lose your favorite mod(s) or break your save is to create a backup of that mod. How do you do that? For HoI4, here is a guide:
•1). First, initially locate where mods are installed: All mods downloaded from the Steam Workshop are stored in the same depository. Follow this path: C: > Program Files (x86) (unless you have your Steam installed elsewhere) > Steam > Steamapps > Workshop > Content. Here you will see folders with just numbers. These numbers are game identifiers assigned by Steam to games that you have modded. For HoI4, it’s folder 394360. Open this folder and, depending on how many mods you have installed, you will find even more folders with more numbers. These numbers are mod identifiers assigned by Steam to mods.
•2). Locate the mod you want to backup: For this mod, UGRC, it’s folder 2579737453. How do you confirm this? Open the folder and locate “descriptor.mod”. To open and view this, you will have to download and install something like Notepad++ . Nevertheless, after opening this file, locate the line "name=[Mod’s name]". Having confirmed this is the mod you want to backup, now copy and paste this folder elsewhere onto your PC, wherever.
Voila! The mod is now backed-up. Now, let’s say the mod had been taken down by DMCA, to get it working again in your game, here’s what you do next:
•1). Where your Documents folder is located on your PC, locate the folder “Paradox Interactive”. Then access the folder “Hearts of Iron IV”. If it’s there, move onto the next bullet, if it’s not there create a folder and name it “mod”.
•2). Launch the game client. On the left side of the client, click on “Mod library”. Now click on “UPLOAD MOD” located on the top right of the window. In the new window that opens, click on “CREATE A MOD”. Complete the workflow. Using UGRC as an example, in the “Name” field, type in UGRC Backup; in the “Version” field, type in Backup or whatever (it really doesn’t matter); in the “Directory” field type in mod/UGRC_Backup; and then click on the green “CREATE MOD” on the bottom right. (Don’t worry, you’re not going to inadvertently upload onto Steam – it’s just creating the mod’s depository onto your PC so that you can get it working again in your game). Exit the game client.
•3). Wherever you saved your mod’s backup, open the mod’s folder and delete the “descriptor.mod” file. This is critical. If you leave this file there, you will get an error message when you launch your game. When you completed the steps in the second bullet, the “descriptor.mod” was already created.
•4). After deleting the “descriptor.mod” from the backup, paste the contents of the backup into the "mod" folder "UGRC_Backup" as located from the first bullet. Re-launch the game client. On the left side, click on “Playsets”. Locate the mod’s backup that you created from the second bullet. In the case of this example, “UGRC_Backup”. Change the indicator from Disabled (it will be grayed out) to Enabled (it will become green). And, voila, the mod will be working again and you can continue your game’s save.
Should you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to let me know. Happy gaming!