It should be noted that outside of the PIxel Dungeon context 'modding' can also be understood as the act of tweaking pre-existing settings and preferences while the game application remains basically the same, but even generally this is not considered modding by some, and in any case in the Pixel Dungeon context 'mod' is called only a new game application based on the Pixel Dungeon original source material or on the source material of one of its mods.

These modifications are often called 'mods' in short, and may range from small changes and tweaks to complete overhauls of the original gameplay. Modifications that violate the GNU GPL v.3's guidelines, those allready mentioned or others, are considered illegitimate and sooner or later get forced to withdraw from most platforms of public distribution (it should be noted that although monetization in the form of having to buy the game, in-game advertisements or of extra content only available after purchase is disliked by many PD players, it is not against the GNU GPL v.3 license's guidelines). The license provides a general framework for all open source software, but its requirements most relevant to PD modding are that credit should be given to the original source material's developer(s) and that the source code of the new game has to be also public and so open to new modifications itself.

Starting from the 27th July 2014, the developer of Original PD, Watabou / Oleg Dolya, has made the game's code public and as a consequence has allowed the development of modifications for it by various secondary developers, as Pixel Dungeon has become since an open source application with its modifications having to follow the guidelines of the General Public License GNU General Public License v.3. 4.2 Amount of mods released by each developer.

4.1 Amount of each family's mods released per year.

2 Original Pixel Dungeon's ancestors: Brogue and Rogue.

Darkest dungeons must have mods reddit