It's fair to say that the release of Civilization 7 has not gone quite according to plan. It's good but not great, and the resulting letdown—people expect big things from new Civ games—has manifested in a straight 50/50 split between positive and negative user ratings on Steam and concurrent player numbers that continue to lag behind those of Civilization 6.
But a recent announcement spotted by VG247 has a lot of fans excited for the future: Firaxis has hired noted Civilization modder Sukrit "Act" Tan to work on the game in an official capacity.
Tan's hiring was first revealed on Discord (via Reddit) and later confirmed by Tan on Bluesky, and the reactions are a whole lot more enthusiastic than you might expect for an "I got a job" message.
Like, for instance, this:
Okay, a little bit of pressure there, but there's genuine happiness and excitement for the move, not just because "modder gets hired by game studio" is a natural feel-good story but because Tan's previous work is just that good: The reactions to a recent update to the Simple UI Adjustments mod for Civilization 6 that got it running in Civ 7 were not too far short of rapturous:
Ironically, someone in that thread jokingly called for Tan to be made chief of the Civilization 7 UI team, a suggestion that sparked a brief conversation about whether they'd be able to continue making mods as part of Firaxis, and how that might actually be a net loss for the Civilization community. Tan acknowledged that it's easier in some ways for mod makers to get things done "because they don't need to work as part of a structure" as official developers do.
The announcement that Tan now will be working as part of that structure has attracted similar concerns about a possible negative impact on Civilization modding, although it's expressed more as hope that they'll be able to continue making mods than hand-wringing that they won't.
Tan hasn't commented on that part of the deal at this point, so for now it's a wait-and-see situation, although I'd imagine that given the current state of Civilization 7, Tan (and the rest of Firaxis) have enough on their plates to keep them busy for a good while to come. Civilization 7's first major update went live yesterday and made some notable moves in the right direction, but as PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde wrote, "it's not a giant overhaul in one go, just the start of many patches to come."
