“We’re Giving Players the Keys to Our Castle” – Dying Light’s Rafał Polito on the Future of User Generated Content

In the recent devblog about The Breach, you mention that you’ve “been into modding and UGC content for years” – could you elaborate on this? What’s your background, and when did you join Techland?

I have been working at Techland for almost 14 years. I started as a Level Designer and worked on Dead Island Riptide, and later on the full production of Dying Light 1. At that time I also decided I wanted to improve our tools and move closer to technology. I started during the pre-production of Dying Light 2: Stay Human, working on tool design for the new game. In the meantime, I released DevTools for Dying Light 1 on Steam Workshop with support for maps, and that was the beginning of my journey with community content.

For Dying Light 2: Stay Human, after launch, we decided to repeat this approach but also give access to console players. Last year we expanded this with visual mods, and now with gameplay mods. I have known many of the key modders in our community for almost 10 years, since the Dying Light 1 days.

I understand you’re still using mod.io for community content, alongside Developer Tools. I read on the Discord that a script editor was recently added – is this true, and is it official? What other dev-related tools have you recently added, or plan to add?

Yes, that is true. We unlocked it so players can access our game scripts and build their own mods based on them. This allows, among other things, changing parameters and creating custom items in community maps.

Right now we do not fully support this in the main game due to concerns about player save safety. We collect reports and mods from creators and review them one by one to decide what is safe to publish and use in the main game.

We have also started work on another editor for players – a character editor. This will allow them to build new NPCs or even a new main character using ready-made assets and meshes.

And for any aspiring modders out there: how complicated are the Developer Tools, and how robust are they in terms of what can actually be achieved?

I would say they are as complex as other industry tools like Unity or Unreal Engine. If someone understands how games are built, it should not be a problem.

They are not as simple as playing The Sims, but I can compare it this way: our maps are often created by single people, while in games like Fortnite, maps are made by teams of 20+ people. So you could say it is around 10 times easier to create a AAA-quality map solo in our tools, given enough time.

Players have access to almost all systems from the main game, so in the best case you can even create an entirely new game. A good example of the potential is the well-known “Renaissance” project, created by over 20 modders over several years, aiming at a level similar to a DLC with a few hours of gameplay.

There are some really cool mods highlighted in your Breach update devblog, but which community creators or mods/maps have really caught your attention (for all Dying Light games, but especially 2), aside from those highlighted in The Breach update (this also covers on console)?

I am always surprised by creations from C.R.E.X. and Bub – some of our best modders. You can really expect anything from them in terms of maps and mods.

From map projects, I can highlight recreations of Harran from Dying Light 1 in Dying Light 2: Stay Human DevTools, especially from our contest. I am still not sure how they managed to recreate it with such precision. They likely have their own additional tools to port content from Dying Light 1 to Dying Light 2: Stay Human.

What kinds of ideas (gameplay/themes) would you like to see modders tackle that you haven’t seen done yet?

Game modes like Survival, Extraction, and Roguelike. I want to work with modders to create new modes as mods for Dying Light 2: Stay Human and community maps. I would also like to see other games recreated in Dying Light 2 DevTools, like Elden Ring Nightreign (I am a big fan of soulslike games) or Dead by Daylight.

Will you descend into the gothic gloom of Atomborne to hunt the unseen, or will you face the Bozak Horde to prove your status as a champion? 🤔 Both maps are available now for you to play!

pic.twitter.com/TayXctyVZx — Dying Light (@DyingLightGame)

June 15, 2026

We can also try to recreate modes like Be The Zombie or Bad Blood from Dying Light 1, but as mods for Dying Light 2: Stay Human. We already have inspired projects like Atomborne or Dead Circuit that show we can mimic other games and significantly change the experience of our game.

What lessons have you learned from the way you approached UGC for the first Dying Light, in terms of how you’re approaching it for Stay Human?

More tools mean more content. If you fully commit to working with modders, you can expect almost anything. That is why we finally started supporting gameplay mods and want to give creators more of our tools. Right now, internally, we say we are giving players the keys to our castle, because why not.

I read that this is the final year of updates for Dying Light 2. Is this true, and if so, is the renewed focus on community maps a way to keep the game alive (so to speak) as attention shifts to The Beast? What kind of ongoing support will there be for the Dying Light 2 mod community?

I cannot confirm this at this moment. We have supported Dying Light 1 for more than 11 years without full UGC support. This is the last year of official support for Dying Light 2: Stay Human, but at the same time we are starting a new journey.

I’d love to expand longer support with closer collaboration with the community. It would be great to have the next 5 years focused on UGC and to give Dying Light 2: Stay Human a second and third life many years after release. Some games, like Skyrim, do not receive updates for years, but their community continues to grow every day. But we’ll see what the future brings.

Following on from this, I understand that The Beast supports mods but they’re either not as integrated or popular as previous Dying Lights. What kind of roadblocks have you come across for incorporating UGC into The Beast, and are there plans to focus on or otherwise promote UGC for this in the future?

We have not finished all tools and UGC support for Dying Light 2: Stay Human yet, so there is no plan to add this to Dying Light: The Beast at this moment. Our focus is to deliver the best possible platform for maps and mods in Dying Light 2 first, to set a benchmark.

Also, it is worth looking at it differently – instead of asking why Dying Light: The Beast needs UGC, we can ask whether ideas from The Beast could be introduced into Dying Light 2. For example, if there is something like a truck feature, we can discuss it.

We use Dying Light 2: Stay Human as a sandbox and platform for testing and expanding ideas. You already saw third-person perspective experiments. With UGC, we can release features early to test interest and feedback. If something works well, it can become an official feature or remain as a mod.

UGC allows us to build features together with players. Similar to how ARMA and DayZ evolved, where DayZ started as a mod and later became a standalone game. I wish similar long-term evolution for Dying Light 2: Stay Human, even beyond official support.

I’ve touched on this in questions above, but I’d like to focus on the very specific challenge of building a UGC ecosystem, with regards to how it stacks up against games with that as a major selling point (eg. Fortnite).

Would you like to see Dying Light’s UGC become something that itself could draw people to the franchise, or alternatively, can you envision a version of the game that is primarily built around players creating the majority of the content in the game?

My long-term personal goal has always been to compete with Unreal Engine and, in terms of UGC, even Fortnite. Of course, this is a different scale, but in terms of content quality we can be among the best in the industry.

As I mentioned before, creating a map often requires many people in other games. We also do not have limitations like “mods for Fortnite,” which makes our setup quite unique.

Our audience is also slightly older than Fortnite or Roblox, so we can bring players into our franchise over time. A possible path could be: starting in Roblox, then moving to Fortnite, and eventually to a AAA co-op experience like ours.

I want to show Fortnite creators and players that they can build similar or even better things in our ecosystem, sometimes even alone. I always aim high, so competing with Fortnite is the direction.

Lastly, with Tymon Smektała leaving, I’ve seen a lot of the franchises’ fans talk about how good he was for the community, with many voicing concerns about the games’ future in this regard. How has his departure affected plans regarding community content? Have you had to scrap or change any previous plans, or conversely, has this opened up UGC in new, perhaps unexpected, ways?

I can say that nothing has changed in terms of plans because of his departure. We even designed some UGC-related features together with Tymon before he left.

I worked with him throughout his career, and I have been at Techland even longer than Tymon. I remember him as a Game Designer on Dying Light, which was a great time. A lot of his influence is still in the company, so even if he is not here in person, his legacy continues with us.

The Breach update for Dying Light 2: Stay Human is live now. Dying Light: The Beast is also currently available on all major platforms, with its most recent patch being the free Restored Land update.

Dying Light, Featured, Interview