When Workshop and mod content will not load

Start with the console, not the mod#

Content faults are noisy if you read the right part of the log. Restart the server, watch the startup output from the first line, and look for three things: whether the content was fetched at all, whether it was mounted, and whether anything failed to load with a name attached. Reacting to the last error in the log is how people end up reinstalling a mod that was never the problem.

Then answer one question before touching anything: is the content missing on the server, or missing for the clients? A server that has mounted an add-on fine but never tells joining players about it produces missing textures and errors on their screens while the server console looks perfectly healthy. Those are different faults with different fixes.

Garry's Mod: collections, visibility and the auto-update trap#

Facepunch documents the whole mechanism. A dedicated server pulls a Workshop collection through one addition to the startup line:

+host_workshop_collection 123456789

Three things go wrong here, in order of how often:

1. The collection is private. The wiki is explicit: "your collection needs to be public or unlisted, else, srcds won't be able to access it!" A collection you can see while logged in is not necessarily one the server can see.
2. The map is in the collection but players are not told to download it. When it works, "server console will contain a message saying Making workshop map available for client download". If that line is absent, the map is not being marked for client download and joining players will fail on content they do not have. The same applies to the gamemode, which prints Making workshop gamemode available for client download when its Workshop ID is set in its <gamemode name>.txt.
3. Content changed underneath you. Workshop items update, and an update can break a server that was fine yesterday. Facepunch documents host_workshop_autoupdate 0 as the way to stop that, and is honest about the trade-off: pinning old versions "could lead to other unwanted consequences, such as map updates preventing players from joining your server". Pin deliberately, not by default, and write down when you did it.

A full working example from the wiki, for reference: srcds.exe +maxplayers 20 -console +host_workshop_collection 157384458 +gamemode zombiesurvival +map zs_cleanoffice_v2. Details for this game are on the Garry's Mod availability page.

ARK: the mod download that silently does nothing#

ARK's mod handling has its own switch. The wiki lists -automanagedmods as the Steam-only switch that handles mod download, installation and updating for you — meaning that without it, the server is not going to fetch anything for you and will start perfectly happily with no mods loaded at all. That is the single most common ARK report: a healthy server with an empty mod list.

The mod list itself lives in the settings file, and knowing where that file is saves an afternoon. The wiki places GameUserSettings.ini at ShooterGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/ on Linux and ShooterGame\Saved\Config\WindowsServer\ on Windows. Editing a settings file in the install folder rather than the saved-config folder is a very common way to change nothing at all.

Two more ARK-specific checks. Mod downloads are large and slow, so a server restarted too quickly after a mod change can look broken when it is still fetching. And every client must have the same mods as the server — an ARK mod mismatch shows up as players bouncing at the loading screen rather than as a server error. See the ARK availability page for what we list.

Rust and Oxide: the plugins folder is exact#

uMod's installation documentation is short and every line of it matters:

• "Find the plugins folder which is located by default at oxide/plugins if it has not been changed by the server host".
• "Do not rename the plugin or change the file extension." A .cs file renamed, zipped, or saved as .txt by a browser will sit in the right folder and never load.
• Uploading a plugin file into that folder loads it without a restart, if Oxide is installed.
• To update, "simply overwrite the original (.cs) file and the new version will be loaded".

Two consequences worth internalising. First, if a plugin does not load, check the file name and extension before you check the plugin. Second, because plugins load on write, a partially-uploaded file can load in a broken state — upload to a temporary name and rename it into place if your transfer is flaky. The Rust availability page lists the plans we run.

Minecraft: version drift is nearly always the answer#

Modded and plugin-based Minecraft servers fail on version mismatch more than on anything else. A mod built for one game version, a loader built for another, and a server jar built for a third will produce a startup crash whose first line names a class or a version number rather than a mod.

The discipline that prevents it: keep one written list of the exact versions you are running — game version, loader version, and each mod or plugin version. Update one thing at a time. After any game update, expect every mod to need a matching release, and do not start the update until they exist. The Minecraft availability page covers the Paper, Forge and Vanilla options.

Isolating one bad add-on from a large set#

When the log does not name a culprit, bisect rather than guess. Move half the add-ons out of the folder, start the server, and see whether the fault survives. Whichever half kept the fault gets halved again. Sixteen add-ons take four restarts to narrow to one; testing them one at a time takes sixteen.

Keep the removed files somewhere you can put them back, change nothing else while you are bisecting, and record each round. When you find it, check whether the add-on has an open issue for your exact version before you write your own workaround.

Where RadarHost fits#

RadarHost rents game servers hosted in Beauharnois, Quebec, Canada, priced in Canadian dollars, with no setup fee and cancel any time. Sixteen games are listed in Standard, Premium and Diamond plans — Minecraft (Paper, Forge or Vanilla), Rust, ARK: Survival Evolved, Garry's Mod, Terraria, Valheim, Palworld, Enshrouded, Satisfactory, Factorio, Project Zomboid, 7 Days to Die, DayZ, Conan Exiles, Arma 3 and SCUM. Counter-Strike 2 and every other title are request-only and are never priced in advance. After payment, our team reviews the order and emails setup details or next steps within 24 hours. If you already know the mod set you want to run, say so when you order — the plans section lists what each tier costs.