I’m working on an indie racing game with a full track builder and Steam Workshop support. Players are already creating and sharing tracks, but now they’re asking for deeper modding: importing their own 3D cars, creating liveries for existing cars, adding props for custom tracks, and generally expanding the in-game builder. I’m trying to find the sweet spot for a small team between freedom and maintainability: full external modding (3D models, props, liveries), a more controlled template-based approach (Unity project + export pipeline), in-game-only tools (stickers/decals/presets), or some kind of hybrid. My main concerns are support load from broken mods, long-term maintenance and versioning, performance issues from user content, the real impact of modding on retention and community growth, and whether this could drain too much dev time during Early Access. For other small teams that have gone through this: what scope of modding has actually worked well for you, did it genuinely help your player base grow, and would you recommend starting small (decals/props only) and expanding later, or designing the full modding vision from day one? Any insight or examples would be super helpful—my goal is to empower the community without drowning the project in tech support.