ModLoader was a simplistic ModSystem developed by Risugami primarily to provide support and compatibility for his own mods but also made available to other modders to allow them to also leverage the increased compatibility thus afforded. In the early days of modding, “base modding” (creating mods by simply modifying the game's base code) was the de facto modding method and as such compatibility between mods was largely a matter of mods just happening to edit different classes.

Amongst the various attempts to create some kind of compatibility layer, ModLoader became the most popular and was the modding platform of choice for a lengthy period, its relative stability was also attractive to modders since they could focus update efforts on the Minecraft codebase itself and not worry about ModLoader changing too much since Risugami rarely added new features. Larger mods could still utilise “base modding” techniques, and use ModLoader's compatibility at the same time to strike a balance between compatibility and scope.

However Risugami's lack of attention to the project started to become a problem for modders. As the game began to change more heavily as Mojang's focus shifted towards a long-term goal of building their own API, ModLoader became increasingly more problematic a dependency for modders, with updates taking longer to emerge and containing bugs which went unpatched rendering some mods unworkable.

In early 2012, the Minecraft Forge project - which had previously been using ModLoader as its underlying mod-loading solution - undertook an effort to build their own, compatible, alternative to ModLoader which became FML. At around the same time the LiteLoader project was started, with the aim of providing a lighter-weight, more reliable alternative to ModLoader for client-side mods to use.

Risugami continued to maintain ModLoader for a time, but the growth of Forge, and a lack of active development which left later releases crippled and barely functional eventually led to the project's termination, with the last available version being released for Minecraft 1.6.2, although community-provided patches were required to make this version work properly.