2025 Serverside Summer Modjam!

Ready for a new and fun competition for the summer of 2025? Take part in this contest and create new mods that will be loved by server owners! (Note, must be 18 or older to claim monetary prizes. Under 18 can still enter but will not be able to claim the monetary prizes)

Special thanks to CurseForge and CreeperHost for helping to contribute to this contest’s prize pool!

Qualifications

The aim of this contest is for modders to create serverside only mods for NeoForge 1.21.1! You can work solo or in a team of people. (Note the prize money is divided among team members)

A mod is considered a serverside mod if it can run on a server and retains most functionalities when a vanilla client connects. (You will be judged based on what functionalities work with vanilla clients) This means the mod should not be needed on clientside at all to do anything. At minimum, the mod should work on dedicated servers but would ideally also work in singleplayer’s integrated server as well. Some possible serverside mod ideas you can do are:

• Worldgen mods. Examples are structures, biomes, ores, dimensions, and more! Worldgen is serversided logic.

• Server utility mods such as helpful commands, chunk claiming, and other tools that are useful!

• Ports of Bukkit/Paper plugins (Note: Make sure you pick a unique name and do not copy any code from the plugins. You would have to remake the idea from scratch with your own code and should not have a name that could cause confusion with the plugin. For example, the Economy Plugin allows players to be “paid” for doing tasks. A NeoForge mod equivalent could be call Payroll that does a very similar thing with a few twists of its own)

• Datapack packaged as a mod qualifies. Do not simply re-upload a pre-existing datapack as a mod. You still have to actively develop the datapack within this contest’s timeframe and then package it as a mod to upload to CurseForge.

• Enchantments, veinminers, improving mob AI, advancements…

• And many more options you can think of! Essentially, the rule is, if I can connect using a vanilla client to a server with your mod and everything works perfectly, it counts!

The main caveat is please do not make a mod that is solely a library for other mods to use. We would like the mods being submitted to be mods that players can slap on a server and see benefits right away.

Furthermore, creating a Fabric mod and then using Sinytra Connector to run it on NeoForge will not be accepted. Also, we encourage usage of NeoForge’s APIs so using Forgified Fabric API is prohibited. The mod needs to be built to run on NeoForge without the use of Sinytra Connector or Forgified Fabric API. We are also disallowing SpongeNeo as well for the same reason that we want the mods to be designed for NeoForge’s systems and not other loader’s.

If a mod exists already on Fabric and then is ported to NeoForge, we do not allow that. The contest is meant to have people create new mods from scratch. The new mod can be made to work on multiple loaders, that is allowed. However, we will be judging on the portion of the code that will be running when on NeoForge.

As for sources and licenses, we require all submissions to be using an Open-Source license approved by the OSI (Open Source Initiative). You can see a list of approved licenses here https://opensource.org/licenses but keep in mind not every Open-Source license is usable for mods. For more info about what it means to use an Open-Source license and what is commonly used for mods, scroll down to the Licenses section.

Prizes

• $150 USD to the top 30 mods! This will be judged on the quality, usefulness, functionality, and documentation of the mod. That’s right, adding a wiki or more detail to your modpage will be a factor here! If your mod has reduced functionality when a vanilla client connects, we will be judging based on that reduced functionality instead of the modded client’s functionality. The $150 will go to the team that made the mod so members among the team have to decide among themselves how to divide up the reward. Keep in mind that anyone under the age of 18 will not be able to receive the money.

*A person on multiple teams or submits multiple mods can only claim their share of the prize for ONE of their submitted mods. If this happens, we will contact the person to ask which mod they would like to claim the prize from and forfeit their reward share for the other mods. (This is to prevent people from submitting a ton of mods to get more than $150. We do not want that. Remember, quality, not quantity is what is desired here for mods)

*For mods created by multiple people on a team, the prize is divided among the team members. How it is divided among the members will be decided by the team members. Make sure you and your team decide ahead of time how to split the rewards to prevent infighting later! We will have a group DM with the mod’s team members so everyone can say what their agreed share of the reward is. Please make sure everyone on the team has DMs enabled if collecting rewards. We will likely have a Steering Council member be contacting the team.

*If you do not want to receive a prize, the form submission link below has a prize opt-out option. You will not be contacted about being paid the prize but you will still be showcased properly if you win!

Timeframe

The contest starts on June 1st and ends on July 31st. In that time frame, you need to create the mod from scratch, get the mod page approved and public on CurseForge, and the link submitted to the submission form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfGvXDdqn10P7XCps2yuk0t7ytfi1NNJEKvFzgM97fVw5ejow/viewform?usp=dialog

From August 1st to August 8th, all submissions will be reviewed by the NeoForge team and applicants contacted for how to get their prize reward if they are eligible for it! On August 9th, we will announce all the winners and honorable mention mods to the NeoForge Discord’s Announcement channel so even players can try out and enjoy the mods! Keep in mind that this is a target date for us to announce the winners. If the contest gets an unexpected amount of entries, we may need a bit more time to finish judging all the entries. If this is the case, we will make an announcement of this so everyone is kept in the loop.

You may upload your mod to other sites such as Modrinth but this contest will only judge posts uploaded to CurseForge. (Remember, CurseForge helped contribute to the prize rewards for this contest!)

Final words

If you have any questions about the modjam, visit the #serverside-summer-modjam channel in the NeoForge discord. You can also share your progress there or in #showcase channel to wow people or get feedback!

You may ask for help with parts of code you are stuck on in our mod support channel too. No one should write your mod for you but people will help guide you, give advice, or help you brainstorm ideas.

Special thanks to CurseForge for helping to contribute $1500 and CreeperHost for contributing another $1500 towards the money pool we will distribute to the winners!

Licenses

This modjam requires all submissions to use an Open Source license that can be found here: https://opensource.org/licenses

The reason for this is we feel that Open Source license is a good practice to encourage in the modding community. It allows modders to learn from each other and be able to contribute code to repositories or fork a mod if that mod goes abandoned. (Note, once you pick a license for your mod, it is highly discouraged to change that license in the future. Especially if many other people helped contribute code to the mod)

However, you should not put a license on your mod without understanding what that license entails.

For more information about what Open Source licenses are, detailed summaries of various common Open Source licenses in modded communities, and how to apply licenses to a mod, please read this blog on NeoForge site: https://neoforged.net/personal/telepathicgrunt/open-source-licenses/

We can help give advice in #serverside-summer-modjam channel in the NeoForge discord if you are still stumped on what license to choose but once again, we are not lawyers. If you ever need actual legal advice on what a license entails for a Minecraft mod, please consult a real lawyer.