Every mod on the Steam Workshop was new once. But the rate at which ecosystems attract fresh work is wildly lopsided — and it's a different signal from raw catalog size or update rates. Publishing velocity shows you where creators are shipping right now, and that's the best leading indicator of which games are drawing new talent.
Using ModSignal's live dataset of 6.76 million active Workshop items across 401 tracked games, we measured publishing velocity directly: how many brand-new mods each game received in the last 30 days, and how often those new mods turned into actual breakout hits.
New mods are rare in absolute terms
Across the entire active catalog, 124,488 new mods were published in the last 30 days — roughly 1.8% of the live catalog. Only 22,959 new mods arrived in the most recent 7 days.
New supply is scarce. And it's concentrated in a handful of games.
Project Zomboid is publishing an outsize share of every new Workshop mod
Project Zomboid added 8,737 new mods in 30 days — that's 7.0% of every new Workshop mod published anywhere in that window, from a catalog whose active mods are a fraction of the giants. For comparison, Counter-Strike 2 — the biggest update-vitality game — added 3,384 in the same period.
The concentration is even sharper when you look at what breaks out:
| Game | New mods (30d) | Hit 10k+ subs | Hit 1k+ subs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project Zomboid | 8,737 | 111 | 578 |
| Trailmakers | 9,587 | — | — |
| Scrap Mechanic | 5,916 | — | — |
| People Playground | 4,935 | — | — |
| Counter-Strike 2 | 3,384 | 10 | — |
Project Zomboid's 111 new releases reaching 10,000+ subscriptions in a month is the standout — it's more 10k breakouts from new mods than any other tracked game by a wide margin, and those new mods captured 5.7 million subscriptions combined.
The top new-mod ecosystems
These are the games attracting the most fresh Workshop work over the last 30 days:
| Game | New mods (30d) | New mods (7d) |
|---|---|---|
| Trailmakers | 9,587 | 751 |
| Project Zomboid | 8,737 | 1,527 |
| Scrap Mechanic | 5,916 | 948 |
| People Playground | 4,935 | 863 |
| Human Fall Flat | 4,795 | 551 |
| DayZ | 4,109 | 908 |
| Counter-Strike 2 | 3,384 | 369 |
| Garry's Mod | 3,105 | — |
| Portal 2 | 2,948 | 400 |
| Stormworks | 2,889 | 680 |
Trailmakers leads raw volume — 9,587 new mods in 30 days, more than any other game. But its new mods land at a much lower average subscription (54 subs per new mod vs Project Zomboid's 676), meaning it's high-supply, low-per-item-demand. Zomboid is the opposite: high supply AND high per-release demand.
Where breakout mods cluster
The single new-mod demand story of 2026 is Project Zomboid's. Its breakout pipeline produced titles like "[B42] Alice's Weapon Sling" (234,750 subs), "Cye's Push Doors!" (176,763), and "Vanilla Outfits Expanded" (161,132) — all published in the last 30 days.
Counter-Strike 2's community produced "Aim Rush - Community Modified Version" (149,930) and Garry's Mod shipped "[PILL PACK] Withered Bon" (103,286). But Zomboid's volume of 6-figure new releases is unmatched.
What this means for studios and creators
- Publishing velocity is a talent magnet. Zomboid's outsized share of new mods (7% of everything) compounds: the more creators ship there, the bigger the audience that checks for new mods, the more the next creator ships. It's a self-reinforcing flywheel that new games almost never get.
- Breakout density beats raw volume. Trailmakers publishes more mods than anyone but converts far fewer to large audiences. For a creator deciding where to invest, per-new-mod average demand matters more than count — and Zomboid's 676-subs-per-new-mod average is the healthiest in the catalog.
- For studios watching pipeline health: the "where do new mods ship" ranking is the clearest early-warning map. A game that stops drawing new mods — even if its old catalog is huge — is a market in decline. Fresh supply is the leading indicator.
- For ModSignal users: the games that cluster here are the ones where new creators have the best shot at being seen. New-mod velocity is what we track daily to spot where the next breakout artist will emerge before they're famous.
How we measure
All figures come from the ModSignal live dataset of the Steam Workshop. "New mods" counts active items by their original creation timestamp (time_created) within the trailing 30-day (or 7-day) window, relative to the 2026-08-30 snapshot. "Active" means currently indexed and not removed. Breakout thresholds (1k / 10k subscriptions) are measured at current subscriptions_current.
This is the data ModSignal tracks daily to spot breakout creators and fading ecosystems early. Explore the live dataset to see which games are winning fresh creator attention, or compare games directly.