Skip to main content
PC Gamer PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES
UK EditionUK US EditionUS CA EditionCanada AU EditionAustralia
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
  • Black Friday
  • Games
  • Hardware
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Video
  • Forum
  • More
    • PC Gaming Show
    • Software
    • Movies & TV
    • Codes
    • Coupons
    • Magazine
    • Newsletter
    • Affiliate links
    • Meet the team
    • Community guidelines
    • About PC Gamer
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$32.49
Subscribe now
Don't miss these
Borderlands 4 Skibidi Toilet mod
FPS Mod maker brings Skibidi Toilet to Borderlands 4 for one simple reason: To spite the narrative director who said he'd 'cry real tears' if the game shipped with it
Minecraft mods - Terralith shows off one of its biomes
Survival & Crafting The best Minecraft mods for glorious new worlds
Hollow Knight Silksong
Action All of Silksong's top mods make the game easier, including a returning Hollow Knight QoL favorite: An always-on compass without wasting a tool slot
An image of a 3D map of Manhattan, including highlighted subway routes.
City Builder The sleeper hit of the Fall might be this mad lad's hyper realistic traffic management sim that uses real census data and a 'distance-based gravity model' to produce millions of NPC commuters
Lucien Lachance, a Dark Brotherhood member in a black hood and robes, gives a rictus grin into the camera.
The Elder Scrolls The best Oblivion Remastered mods
A low-res city
City Builder This 'brutally honest' city builder features greedy landlords, cutthroat corporations, and a newspaper that gives you 'a constant reminder that your citizens' bad luck is perhaps your fault'
Windmills
City Builder Cities: Skylines 2 latest region pack heads to the Netherlands, 'the land of windmills, clogs, and stroopwafel,' and includes new hospitals, fire stations, and hyperrealistic cemeteries
An alien shooting at a stormtrooper
RPG I wouldn't have thought I'd be playing Starfield again in 2025, but this Star Wars total conversion mod is a real blast(er)
Bretonnian knights charge into battle
Games The best strategy games on PC
RPG Maker MZ cover art
Gaming Industry 6 of the most popular apps on Steam that aren't games
Image from city builder Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles of stone towers built on islands in a rough sea
Sim Chill city-builder Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles just got a massive update that adds an 'OP AF' new airship, as the developer urges players to check out his game: 'Any review helps, even the critical ones'
A WorldCorp security guard totes a pistol.
RPG The Deus Ex mod that's a better sequel than Invisible War just got a mondo-update, and playing it couldn't be easier
Spaceships do battle while a giantess with pointy teeth watches
Games The best sex games on PC that aren't garbage
Stalkers crowd around a campfire, one playing guitar.
FPS One of Stalker's most legendary mods has joined GOG's one-click install program, making it easier than ever to die horribly in Chornobyl
Cops surrounding the player
Grand Theft Auto A GTA map modder reinvented the 26-year-old classic GTA 2 with a seemingly simple but actually quite complicated trick
Popular
  • New Valve hardware
  • Best PC gear
  • Arc Raiders
  • PC Gaming Show
  • Quizzes
  1. Games
  2. Sim
  3. Cities: Skylines

The most delightfully inessential Cities: Skylines mods

Features
By Wes Fenlon published 9 November 2016

Here are a bunch of weird mods you have no reason to ever use. Or do you? (You don't.)

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Cities: Skylines mods let us do amazing things. We've customized our cities with pieces from the 17,000+ props and 20,000+ maps on the Steam Workshop. We've driven around on street level and walked the sidewalks in first person. We've celebrated some of the most inspiring mods and creations the community has to offer.

But out of those thousands and thousands of mods, there have to be some that just aren't quite amazing, right? Some mods that make you tilt your head and wrinkle up your nose and go, "Huh." We decided to go on a hunt for these unsung props and maps, and this is what we found: 11 Cities: Skylines mods that you absolutely don't need, and will probably never, ever install. 

Page 1 of 12
Page 1 of 12
Yellow Curve 3

Yellow Curve 3

Why would you click this download link

Yellow Curve 1 was a good curve, and it was yellow. But was it yellow enough, and curve enough? It seems not. It seems we needed another curve to fill that role. Thus Yellow Curve 2 was born, just as yellow, and yet even more curve. But still, modder Beardmonkey was not satisfied. And lo: Yellow Curve 3, the most yellow curve of them all.

Page 2 of 12
Page 2 of 12
Clown Head Remover

Clown Head Remover

Why would click this download link

Jumbo ice cream cones? Wanna eat 'em up. Giant doughnuts? Delightful! Clown heads? Whoa whoa whoa. Hold the damn phone. Not in this city, pal. Unlike more general prop remover mods, this one has a singular and pure vendetta against red-nosed busts. If you really hate clowns, even tiny ones scattered around a digital city have to go. 

Page 3 of 12
Page 3 of 12
No On-Street Parking

No On-Street Parking

Why would you click this download link

No one really likes to parallel park, but this seems a bit extreme. 

Page 4 of 12
Page 4 of 12
2ch for Chirpy

2ch for Chirpy

Why would you click this download link

Hm, what would make Chirpy less annoying? How about making it post messages from Japan's 2ch message board? Yeah, that'll definitely solve the problem.

Page 5 of 12
Page 5 of 12
No Tree Dirt & Remove Dirt

No Tree Dirt & Remove Dirt

Why would you click this download link

Trees in Cities: Skylines just have this yucky natural thing to them. There's, like, dirt and stuff when you place them, as if to show that they grow out of the soil. This mod is having none of that, and removes any sign of dirt for pristine ground across your entire city. Another mod goes even farther, removing dirt from around picnic benches and other objects, too. Begone, foul peat. 

Page 6 of 12
Page 6 of 12
No Seagulls

No Seagulls

Why would you click this download link

Fuck birds.

Page 7 of 12
Page 7 of 12
Hipster Music Pack

Hipster Music Pack

Why would you click this download link

Listen, I want to add some more music to Cities: Skylines, but I don't want it to be music you've ever heard of. I've never even heard of it. I found them by typing random letters into Soundcloud URLs and throwing out any album results that didn't sound like a brand of organic air freshener. Install this mod, and you are now cool.

Page 8 of 12
Page 8 of 12
45 variations of the Urban Working Class house

45 variations of the Urban Working Class house

Why would you click this download link

This is either a damning commentary on the sameness of urban housing, or modder Jimbobbedyjobob is obsessed with populating a Skylines city with almost-but-not-quite identical houses. 45 variations, to be exact. If you need 45 copies of a small brick house with different colored windows, you've come to the right place. Var212a or bust! 

Page 9 of 12
Page 9 of 12
Trash

Trash

Why would you click this download link

"What does this mod?" asks DaHamper97. What does this mod indeed, DaHamper97. The world may never know. 

Page 10 of 12
Page 10 of 12
Water Tower With Advertisement

Water Tower With Advertisement

Why would you click this download link

For when a water tower without an advertisement just looks fake. As if any easily visible surface could possibly be left free of branding! With this mod, our suspension of disbelief in Cities: Skylines remains intact.

Page 11 of 12
Page 11 of 12
Unuseful theme

Unuseful theme

Why would you click this download link

"It's a unuseful theme! I hope you'll have fun. Or not." writes modder 1schiffer4.  This feels like a trick. This mod has only had 2 unique visitors on its page, ever, and I'm pretty sure they're both from me on different computers.

Page 12 of 12
Page 12 of 12
Wes Fenlon
Wes Fenlon
Social Links Navigation
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

Read more
Borderlands 4 Skibidi Toilet mod
Mod maker brings Skibidi Toilet to Borderlands 4 for one simple reason: To spite the narrative director who said he'd 'cry real tears' if the game shipped with it
 
 
Minecraft mods - Terralith shows off one of its biomes
The best Minecraft mods for glorious new worlds
 
 
Hollow Knight Silksong
All of Silksong's top mods make the game easier, including a returning Hollow Knight QoL favorite: An always-on compass without wasting a tool slot
 
 
An image of a 3D map of Manhattan, including highlighted subway routes.
The sleeper hit of the Fall might be this mad lad's hyper realistic traffic management sim that uses real census data and a 'distance-based gravity model' to produce millions of NPC commuters
 
 
Lucien Lachance, a Dark Brotherhood member in a black hood and robes, gives a rictus grin into the camera.
The best Oblivion Remastered mods
 
 
A low-res city
This 'brutally honest' city builder features greedy landlords, cutthroat corporations, and a newspaper that gives you 'a constant reminder that your citizens' bad luck is perhaps your fault'
 
 
Latest in Sim
Peak scout posing
Peak's newest patch update buffs one of the game's most exploited items, and finally resolves an issue it's had since launch
 
 
Coffee Talk Tokyo two characters sat at the coffee bar
Coffee Talk will open the doors to its next instalment on March 5, taking us to the series' most exciting location yet
 
 
A D&D campaign on a tavern table
Tavern Keeper's item design tool is so good one player made a tabletop D&D set where you can actually read the stats on the character sheets
 
 
Peak ROOTS biome shot from a distance
Unsurprisingly, players have already found a way to use parts of Peak's newest biome to fire themselves into the stratosphere
 
 
Microsoft Flight Simulator Top Gun Maverick DLC
Microsoft Flight Simulator isn't just for nerdy dads anymore: Boeing will start using its tech to train actual pilots
 
 
A truck drives through a bamboo forest with a mascot in the back
Why I love driving around oddball Japan in Promise Mascot Agency
 
 
Latest in Features
black ops 7 sbmm
Black Ops 7 has problems, but Call of Duty recognizes where the wind is blowing: The triumphant return of loose SBMM and persistent lobbies in the FPS
 
 
The Steam Deck alongside Valve's three new products: the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller.
We should all just take a moment to appreciate Valve announcing new Steam hardware in 2025 and NOT ONCE MENTIONING AI
 
 
Hands-on with Valve's new VR headset, the Steam Frame, during an interview at Valve HQ in Bellevue, Washington.
The Steam Frame's vision is only black and white and that could be a real miss
 
 
Valve's new Steam Machine during a visit to Valve HQ in Bellevue, Washington. The Steam Machine is a compact living room gaming PC.
How much is that Steam Machine in the window? Let's talk potential pricing for Valve's new living room gaming box
 
 
Valve's new and improved Steam Controller during a visit to Valve's HQ in Bellevue, Washington.
I can't live without the Steam Deck's trackpads anymore, and I hope the Steam Controller forces the competition to adopt them
 
 
Valve's new Steam Machine during a visit to Valve HQ in Bellevue, Washington. The Steam Machine is a compact living room gaming PC.
Valve's Steam Machine may look a bit like the Borg Cube, but it's still the friendliest face of PC gaming I've seen yet
 
 
  1. Two of the best PC cases with the PC Gamer Recommended badge in the top right.
    1
    The best fish tank PC case in 2025: I've tested heaps of stylish chassis but only a few have earned my recommendation
  2. 2
    Best gaming laptop 2025: I've tested the best laptops for gaming of this generation and here are the ones I recommend
  3. 3
    Best Hall effect keyboards in 2025: the fastest, most customizable keyboards for competitive gaming
  4. 4
    Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC
  5. 5
    Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards
  1. HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless gaming headset
    1
    HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless gaming headset review
  2. 2
    Turtle Beach Vulcan II TKL gaming keyboard review
  3. 3
    Razer Blackwidow V4 Low-Profile Tenkeyless Hyperspeed gaming keyboard review
  4. 4
    Dispatch review: A triumphant season of interactive TV
  5. 5
    Rue Valley review: Lost in its own time loop

PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

Add as a preferred source on Google
  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...