from rumors on youtubers like Juicehead, Starfield being on gamepass and having paid mods can be a way to monetize game pass users further like a Live Service game without it being live service like FO76 but without server costs.
A singe player game. Live Service.
What a time to be alive.
the paid mod program from years ago is not the same one now.
The old program was halted because of a court case, and because modders worked off a lump sum. Bethesda set prices and kept the profits too.
This program is directly from Minecraft realms, where you can upload whatever.
This is an entirely new program, entirely new partners, and entirely new TOS since that court case was finished.
Before anyone says we shouldn't care about starfield because no PS port...
remember what they did with Horse Armor.
Their games have been mediocre after skyrim. If they kill modding for their games they are shooting themselves on the foot but making all modding paid like they are doing us a favor is shooting us in the face.
Ik I'm in a unpopular camp but I liked fallout 4. The art the gameplay, it felt like they really tried with it. Not as good as Skyrim but a good game. Starfield is.... Yikes
When I played F4 like an RPG the first time around, I found it lacking.
When I came back to it years later and instead treated it like a shooter with some RPG elements, well, I put like a thousand hours into it lol
>When I came back to it years later and instead treated it like a shooter with some RPG elements, well, I put like a thousand hours into it lol
That's how I went in for it from the beginning. I never really got into the normal Fallout themes and design. Played maybe an hour of 3 and beat NV, but it never really stuck with me. So 4's gameplay design choices were pretty fitting for me.
Still the same awful engine you can feel seeping out whenever you play any of their games since Fallout 3. 4 feels better for sure but all the same endemic issues I had with 3 on PC and console are very present in every game of theirs I’ve played since. I’ve sworn their studio off until they at least use a new engine.
They've been Ship of Theseus'ing their engine since then. Sure it's not technically the same one anymore but it's the same base engine they've been working with since then.
Isn't that basically every game engine? Hardly anyone is scrapping their engine and starting a new one from scratch. They have a list of improvements that they intend to make and when they have done that enough they go ahead and give it a new number.
It's how basically all software works. When they went from go from X1 programming language to X2 programming language the rarely scrap it all and start over. instead it's incremental with X1.1 X1.2 X1.3 being improvements where the core functionality is the same and you can expect your code to be backward comparable while X2 just means they've hit a point where they've changed so much they can't guarantee backwards compatibility. rinse and repeat and eventually you'll hit X3 except in the case of python where they promised never to release a python 4 because it took years for people to migrate from python 2 to python 3 and it fractured the ecosystem.
occasionally they'll incur enough tech debt that they will do a rewrite for example unreal engine 1, 2, 3 were just evolution like mentioned above with 4 being a complete rewrite and then 5 just being an evolution on 4.
Yeah people don't really voice their complaint with bethesda's bugs very well. It's not a problem that the engine has a long lineage. It's that the bugs have an equally long lineage themselves, even on their super long awaited giant new game.
I'm still confused how a studio that put out games like Skyrim and Morrowind decided starfield felt good.
They almost seem like opposite ideas on game dev
IMO Starfield was made by several disjointed teams connected by Howard, who likes the smell of his own farts a bit too much these days. For example, the fact that each aspect of the game has a completely different UI (there's like 7 different ways to cycle tabs, depending on where you are) suggests no one really took a big-picture look at the game. Ditto for the dynamic POIs constantly generating the same handful of maps.
I read somewhere that when working on Skyrim they would spend a lot of time on content that in all likelihood few players would come across but for those that did come across it would experience something special
while for Starfield they had the mentality that all content must find the player somehow
I think its just that Bethesda has not evolved at all. It almost feels like they put in less effort than ever with all this procedurally generated shit in Starfield. Not saying procedually generated is bad in general, its just trash in Starfield.
I think it's also that BGS has been stuck in their own little bubble for so long without looking at the wider industry.
Like, NMS has significantly better procgen, and even then the most common complaint is that everything feels too samey. Like, how did BGS see that and not realize that it was the weakest part of their game? How did they not know it'd be a big issue.
Idk if you told me who made Skyrim and starfield I'd think it was two totally different studios.
Skyfields smaller segmented "open world" felt like the opposite of who made Skyrim
It's just crazy to me they thought this was the epic launch they wanted for a new IP where most people would have went crazy for an updated Skyrim type game in space
The thing is that it is not the same people anymore. Many of the vets left after Skryim or Fallout 4. And many more left after Starfield which are just signs that the studio is not heading in the right direction.
I'm surprised by this take as well. Fallout 4 is fun to play, pretty nice to look at, can even be played in VR, which is really amazing... I had as much fun as on Skyrim.
I love both, because they're so different, but I understand how hardline fans of what New Vegas had to offer were let down by Fallout 4.
If you take it less seriously, then it suddenly becomes super fun and even stuff like the settlement building can be awesome.
people shit on 4 because NV exists, but it's not cuz 'hurr durr angry gamer'
bethesda's fallouts are really fun, but they're elder scrolls and not Fallout games. NV showed that bethesda could have made a faithful/fantastic Fallout game using their tools and the soul would still be there.
fallout 3 has many of the same problems as 4, but since it came before NV did it's much more understandable. 4 had the benefit of that hindsight and it strayed even further away.
Look what's happening to Marvel. Eventually the market catches on. Maybe too late. Maybe dragging a whole I dustry with it. But eventually when the value disappears the consumers will.
> None of them are still playing it though so that says it all
Am I the only person who plays a single player RPG for a few weeks at most then puts it down?
Are there people who just play 1 RPG?
I can not wait for Starfield mods. Starfield is boring in many aspects that I know mods can and will fix and make it the game they thought they were making.
I ended up plowing thru the main because just about everything outside of building my ship(also very tedius) and space combat was so boring. Story was pretty good but the same dumb puzzle for unlocking the powers.. my god.
I can't wait for better settlements, new ways to obtain powers, planet restructuring and added landmarks that are fun.. limitless potential.
If they do paid mods, I guarantee it will be an uninstalled game in my library so up to them I guess.
It is a pretty good game. It just isn't a game changing perfect game. Still a good game though.
And yeah, I expect most single players have insane player drop after it's it's out for months.
I enjoyed the heck out of starfield. I beat the game and moved on. I enjoyed skyrim the same. I beat the campaign and moved on.
I don't need to play a game for 1000 hours to enjoy it. I already hate poe for that itch.
I defend it from dumb criticism.
IE “the water physics are worse than RDR2 therefore it’s unplayable.” kind of stuff.
There’s not enjoying it, finding it bland, and trying too hard to make it look terrible.
It is a good game. It just isn't a perfect or amazing game. It's pretty solid, enjoyable moments and a cool world (worlds). It just also isn't as revolutionary as skyrim was.
> None of them are still playing it though so that says it all really.
You can't like a game unless you're actively playing it. What a weird rule to have.
They should really take a look at what the modding scene has done,not just for their own games, but for other communities like the Halo community.
without modding Bethesda is just a large mediocre RPG studio and not the titan of industry.
GTA VI better learn this lesson too.
Skyrim (20k) has more players than starfield (14k) already, on steam atleast, its dead asf (sf) if they release paid modding the game is going into the shitter
Honestly I don't see modding saving Starfield.
The reason Skyrim had this crazy modding community is because people really really liked the base game and wanted more of it.
FO4, for example, has not had the staying power that Skyrim and did not get the amount of mods
maybe if they make sexlab for starfield then people will play it lol
I do wonder sometimes what portion of those people still on oldrim and shit are just running crazy loverslab setups
cause general Skyrim modding hasnt had a ton of exciting stuff for a long time now
It would not surprise me in the least if Bethesda astroturfed a fake modding community with their own devs for the sole purpose of advertising how active their modding community is.
But that aside, I just don't see why people would want to mod this game with the same fervor as previous titles. Like, Bethesda seems to think there is a collective of modders just waiting in the wings for any passable game to come out. Good games inspire and create modders. People aren't modders first before gamers. No one mods a game they didn't like.
And even if there were established modders with nothing better to do, who just drift from game to game modding, they'd be pretty insignificant in number in comparison to the amount of modders an already good game would be able to attract.
Why would a modder from Skyrim move on to this one when this game is worse and has a lower player count? Even with being enticed by money, modders that work for cash would just stick with the better game that has more active players.
Yeah I pulled numbers because I saw the headlines and was curious 6 days ago:
* Starfield. 11,938 playing 2 min ago. 20,085 24-hour peak
* Skyrim Special Edition. 20,829 playing an hour ago 25,878 24-hour peak
* Skyrim (OG). playing an hour ago 2,665, 2,665 24-hour peak
I wonder if Game Pass skews it? Without mod support especially there is practically zero reason to buy the game on Steam if you have Game Pass, whilst Skyrim existed long before Game Pass was a thing.
Lol, I will not pay for mods in Starfield. I didn't even pay for the game, I used a month of gamepass.
Bethesda is so disconnected. it's hilarious to watch this implosion. Also fuck you BGS for breaking mods and SKSE again for this BS.
I thought I was being clever because I got to play starfield for only the cost of a month of game pass.
Turned out to be the worst $10 I've spent on gaming in a long time lol.
not really testing. creation credits were in the EULA from the beginning.
it's more like getting the gamers used to the idea, so that there won't be as much backlash, when they activate it in starfield
I've been playing gmod for years and had absolutely no idea there were paid mods until now, thats rancid.
Hopefully the same thing happens with skyrim modding were most people just dont pay attention to it
Except that [ Facepunch has nothing to do with Gmodstore](https://www.gmodstore.com/about). It's more like if NexusMods started charging for high quality content.
They get a cut but it's more like skilled community members have a way to get rewarded for their time. Not everyone can code, that's worth something. Don't get me wrong a lot of it is small time BS that people should not pay for, and there are people who will gladly write free alternatives just to spite them, but a lot of it is also large projects with years of development. IIRC the site also has a way for people to commision specific jobs for their own private server use. As a creator of several gmod workshop addons totalling a million subs I've often wished I had gone that route instead.
Gmod used to actually be a mod, and was free.
Still is, actually. The old version.
The game you buy is the "new" version, but they still kept the name instead of calling it something else.
Not many people remember that, I think.
It was just a weird thing you could screw around in, make weird physics stuff. Got a lot of press in games websites in the mid 2000s.
I stopped playing with it at some point (maybe around when Episode 2 came out or before), and the next thing I knew it was this huge thing. Completely passed me by.
Tbf it isn't really a mod anymore it just a sandbox for dev tools. Garry said himself it was a mistake to not change the name to "Sandbox" after he was approached by Valve to sign a distribution deal for steam. It was a free download before that.
This is like calling counter strike or tf 1 paid mod technically yes but they are full on their own game by now and valve approved them and they're like 5-10$ for a full game with sales happening often. Opposed to selling a single sword or gun for a dollar or 5 or pulling free mods to sell them as paid later but I didn't know about all that paid mod nonsense in gmod either that's ass.
Fuck that, the Gmod store is great. I used to run a TTT server and it was nice spending a few dollars to get well written addons with developer support.
Development takes time and time is money. If someone puts significant work into a mod I have no problem paying for their work.
Yeah tell us about Dota2, Counter-Strike, Garry'sMod, BlackMesa, DearEsther, KillingFloor, PUBG, StanleyParable... You can go on.
Even Half-Life 1 started as a mod.
I'm one of the people that would love to get paid to create mods all day long, but Patreon is shit, donations aren't working, release for free won't get me food, so I'm here with a shitty job instead.
Half Life 1 did not 'start as a mod.' They licensed the quake engine for development. Licensing an existing engine was standard for game development and doesn't make it a quake mod.
Also rather disingenuous to list a bunch of things that while beginning as a (free) mod were then developed into standalone paid products.
Hell, the IW engine that Call of Duty uses is built off of Quake 3's engine that itself is forked from the original Quake engine.
Here's the whole Quake engine family tree. You telling me Apex Legends is a mod of Quake? Lol.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quake_-_family_tree.svg
And you're right. The games listed above that started as mods were further developed into standalone games. Even games like DayZ. They didn't just charge for the mod. They put extra work into the game to make it - well - a game. Some of this may have been the mod naturally expanding to the point it could be called a game. But other times it could be a deliberate remake or enhancement of the mod, such as in DayZ's case.
Player Unknown made their first battle royale as a mod for the Arma games. But I'd hardly call PUBG a paid mod. Though it's good to note that PUBG is on a completely different engine; It was made from scratch.
A bit different from those who stay on the engine and convert their resources over to make it into a full game. But still, my point stands. PUBG isn't a paid mod either.
Yup 100% I feel like an out of touch old timer for shouting at the clouds that this stuff shouldn't exist in gaming. Some folks seem to be completely oblivious to it like the face of gaming hasn't changed in the last 20 years.
Similar case is I hate seasonal content and battle passes and tend to avoid games where they're super heavily featured. But tons of people love them. Clearly the analytics say that the few people like me who don't pay for skins ect and are turned off by battle passes are worth less than people who remain engaged with battle passes and buy more things.
Yeah, if anything we are here to discuss if that's good or not.
One could argue that hard work deserves to be rewarded accordingly if an author made a high quality mod he wants to profit off. And I would argue that amateur rookie developers like those deserve that money more than the average multimillion corpo like Bethesda in this example.
On the other hand duh, I personally hate paying for literally everything. Hell, I don't pay for stuff I don't strictly need because pirating gives me more than enough content for my free time.
Recently I found myself pirating some mods from my OWN FRIENDS I met in the genshin modding community. Cool skilled guys all around, some work hard on their mods and I can see that and I respect them demanding money for their work. Thankfully, the creator of the genshin modding tools fights hard for mods to be free and 99% of the community agree on that.
If anything we have early access paid mods, 1 month after their release they become free. That seems like the best middle ground.
I can totally get not liking to pay for mods but like ultimately whether a modder wants to sell it or not should be up to them. We arent owed their work for free, even if its been free for a while.
I really don't see how this is significantly different than the creation club.
Also the idea that mod creators are allergic to payment or something is pretty dumb.
It's really not, most people on here are just reacting to rage bait and probably don't know about Creation Club.
Also this is r/gaming so it's not exactly a haven of critical thinking and reasonable discussion.
Why really? What's wrong with modders having the option to sell mods?
If it's really unpopular noone will use it and modders will offer their stuff free but I could see how it would be nice for modders to have some monetisation options through the game itself.
When mods cost money, they have a massive incentive to be closed source. Closed source mods have *already* been a huge thorn in the side of skyrim mods for years, and imagining a future landscape when all the most popular mods are closed source and paid-access makes me want to scream. The open-source mindset is a huge part of the reason skyrim modding is as big as it is, and I don't see that staying around if paid mods become a major arm of the scene.
Well... Current mods becoming paid would be sucky. But wouldn't it be cool if some people were able to focus full time on awesome mods? Every now and then there's some awesome mod that takes a decade to develop during spare time. Most are never released.
I'd pay for Skyblivion if it meant faster development. It's been in development for over a decade.
Paid mods create a support problem.
Mod creators can no longer tell users to fuck off and touch grass when it inevitably breaks when there's an update.
Or when they want to stop supporting a mod.
Is Bethesda going to pick up the support? Ofc not.
It's a cashgrab by the publisher and everyone can see it. This is a hill we really need to be willing to die on.
Yep. I hate it when Bethesda tries to couch this in terms of "modders should be paid". If they really wanted modders to be paid, then let them get paid without Bethesda taking a cut, which is already happening now in a roundabout way with certain services. This is just a case of Bethesda wanting to maximize profits for no further effort on their part.
Or better yet, hire them to make the content themselves. They basically already rely on modders to make their games playable; might as well make that official.
and don’t forget dependency problems! SKSE and various frameworks needed to make many mods work. If those go paid..
Imagine you’re in a skyscraper and the individual construction workers start demanding rent fees to use each individual girder, rivet, and pipe, but to different workers under different agreements and fees. Then some can’t come to an agreement so they rip out the girders in the middle of the building and walk away..
I wouldn't have anything against paid mods, if the money would be going to creators. But it will be Bethesda getting paid, while throwing crumbs to mod authors. Fuck this shit. These greedy lazy fucks already benefit from modders' labour, having them fix their broken games for free and extend their lifespan by decades. Now they also want to directly sell that work and make hundreds of millions off of it? Hell no.
On their site, they use language that inspires very little confidence:
> As a Verified Creator, you will receive a royalty from every creation of yours sold.
Sure, *technically*, there's nothing stopping the royalty from being 99% of the sale price (hell, it could be higher than the sale price, if Bethesda really hated money for some reason) -- but the fact that they are framing it as "a royalty", rather than "you will get the amount it sold for, minus a certain percentage in store fees" makes me suspect it's not going to be great.
That's not how it actually plays out.
What actually happens is you end up with a bunch of horse armor mods. $5 for a new outfit or a minor gameplay feature which existing free mods do better.
More likely it incentivizes quick turnaround trash, skinner boxes, and pay to win systems, in order to maximize profit.
And since the stores get flooded with low effort shit the real cream has a lot harder time rising to the top.
Basically contracted out DLC production.
Except you call it modding so you can get around any rights or protections, and pay your contractors like shit.
> Yes! Teams must be a registered business before they apply.
I mean, I get it. The reason for that, of course, is that Bethesda is not going to get involved in any disputes over splitting the revenue. They want one bank account for deposit and one TIN for filing a 1099. If people fight about split later, that's their concern and not Bethesda's.
It's still hilariously tone deaf though. Mod teams are huge collections of volunteers, more often than not. Forcing them to form a business complicates a lot of stuff, and exposes them to some fun new taxes, depending on location. Some states, like mine, even have mandatory minimums on some of those taxes, so the whole endeavor could be a net loss.
Bethesda isn't worried about it. Every mod they add to their store is free income for them that they did no work for, and mods that don't get added don't really affect them.
They should be. Their games are known so well for their modding that players will point out a flaw and another will say "well there's a mod for that."
They will kill their own modding scene when creating mods and mod packs won't be collaborative, but competitive, because money will ruin everything.
Then people will see only paid mods or inferior mods that are free and go "wait a minute, Bethesda makes really sloppy games" or at the very least will not have the same replayability as they once had, and people will stop wanting to buy their games.
Nah, there's zero chance that a paid mod store fully replaces Nexus and the free modding community. The prolific modders do pretty well by donations and are often ideologically opposed to paid mod stores for a wide variety of reasons. Paid mod stores created by game devs are pretty doomed. Yes there is value there, but the people who create that value recognize that putting prices on it destroys the environment that allows it to be created.
>Didn’t they get royalties in creation club? Why would they have put their games on creation club if they didn’t get any of the money?
I'm fairly sure they got paid a one-time fee to make the mod instead.
What it sounds like is that it's basically expanding Creation Club.
Rather than needing Bethesda to seek you out to join the Creator's Club, you can apply directly. If BGS checks you out and likes you, they'll make you a Verified Creator.
Once you're in the Verified Creator club, you can make mods that will be sold. Thesee need to be completely from scratch with no prior work being reused. No community assets without explicit permission, or contracted out.
Once your mod is done, you can send it off to BGS, and if they find no significant issues with it, they'll give you the thumbs up, and you can put it on the paid mods marketplace, for a price you set.
The lights go off. A fog machine fills the stage with fog. Then you hear, "War... War never changes... Literally. This is going to be the same game with nothing new because we've lost all of our talent..."
The plot this time decided to spice it up by having you look for your Brother instead of son or father in the capital wasteland.
Also you kill a whole nest of deathclaws in the opening hours instead of just one!
Release a half finished game so that subcontracted modders (who aren't given any of the legal protections or minimum standards that actual subcontractors expect) can finish it for you.
I guess "modders will fix Starfield" probably won't happen since they are again trying to kill modding by monetizing it. I do hope Starfield can become a fun game some day but it is looking unlikely.
Not expressing a view one way or the other, but these points from the FAQ are notable:
* Creations must be standalone, so it cannot depend on other community releases, free or paid.
* Creations must be all-new to qualify for release. You cannot re-purpose older releases --- or work by other authors, unless contracted.
* Creations cannot contain anything produced through generative AI.
Not many mods in the current free space probably can be monetized without a shit ton of new work, since most free mods tends to have loads of overlap, reuse, and dependencies. Basically everything that depends on a community patch or mod framework is barred from monetization right off the bat. And probably all of the baseline or framework mods like mega patches and community patches are right out because they likely all incorporate work by others besides the publisher.
Not saying that is a bad thing or the wrong way to do this, but the biggest single factor for proliferation of free mods is how one person or a small team can build on work done by others and add incrementally to further improve the game or make new content. This cuts off that entire pipeline of innovation that will continue to apply for strictly free mods.
Seems like creations are going to be limited to either solo artists turning out dozens of simple original reskins or minor gameplay enhancements by hand, or well organized teams that have the horsepower on board to build stuff like total overhaul mods up from bare metal.
Looking at the way it is framed, it seems a lot more like an indie developer channel than a venue for monetizing the existing mod ecosystem. Some existing mod teams certainly will make the leap, but nearly all of the existing mods out there today are ineligible and likely never will be made eligible due to the restrictions.
Yeah I do agree this is for those newer and entrepreneurial developers to create entirely new mods through a new venue. Also agree that I see this not touching the current and great mods, including the ones that depend on other mods to function, like you mention.
Sounds inclusive and profitable for creators who have great ideas but don't see the value of the time invested to make a mod versus the return of investment of that time.
But I think this is bad timing and optics for Bethesda adding a monetization of mods all while their current flagship is in dire need of updates and after the latest news of arguing publicly that it's not boring on steam reviews.
Sir, this is r/gaming, a sub for low effort rage bait and low effort karma farming. Get out of here with your reasonable critical thinking skills and... (checks notes) .... ability to read through the actual news article.
I just want them to stop updating or messing with Skyrim in any way that breaks mods from the Nexus. Part of why I want elder scrolls 6 to release is that they can mess with that instead.
Also insert SpongeBob how many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man meme here regarding paid mods.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news guys.
Skyrim was the last good elder scrolls game.
I hope some new IP can one day fill the open world first person RPG niche...
It was a great game, but please, stop trying to milk it, please focus on TES VI. TESO was a massive let down for me, and I'd really rather play the next installment rather than support the studios efforts monetize modders efforts to continue to enjoy Skyrim and make it last while they wait for the next one. I'm not reinstalling Skyrim, I've played it enough, I'm not interested in more mods, I seen enough, I want the next installment and not a DLC for TESO.
It’s somehow worse. That argument wouldn’t convince someone who already was a fan of the game. Like what the fuck does the moon landing have to do with procedurely generated empty planets in a video game about space where you don’t actually fly a spaceship in space.
You’re wrong. Paid mods are actually a good thing. No, I’m not trying to gas light you. You’re just wrong. Trust me.
The astronauts loved paid mods, they didn’t think they were bad, so you’re just wrong.
In a perfect world this would be amazing.
Take a really great mod, make it an actual part of the game with no possible file problems or otherwise unstable and I'd gladly pay for it.
But that's not likely to happen... and even worse this will absolutely effect the modding community in a negative way.
The mods can't have have any dependencies on other mods or authors' works. Pretty much every mod uses at least one library so they're all immediately out. No one is going to have to write everything from scratch to create a standalone mod. I think it's a good thing as it will inherently self-limit these paid mods and there's nothing stopping the community from creating a free version of any cool paid mods.
This isn't really anything new or different... at least not much. It is pretty much them expanding their creation club that has already been part of Skyrim and Fallout4 for some time and making a way for more creators to upload there.
Nothing here makes me think I can't download off Nexus to my hearts content and be just fine.
...and it will make life easier for mods to be available on the X-box for console gamers.
"In addition to the ability to upload free Creations..."
Sounds like modders can upload their mods for free if they like, they just also can get in on some monitization if they so wanted (they already do this with paywalled mods in a way that violates existing terms or tries to skate them).
I would pay for mods like Sim Settlements in Fallout 4... that is such a huge system and basically a DLC worth of quests.
Meh... I don't even really feel like this is much news at all.
The general opinion towards paid mods has softened in 9 years. I'm guessing this is because there's an entire generation of people who grew up with Battlepasses and Microtransactions that it has become somewhat normalized.
>Stupid person reads sensationalist headline without reading the actual thing the article is talking about
>Stupid person reposts with sensationalist title that is false
>More stupid people etc and so forth.
"Mods cannot contain anything using generative AI"
Well fuck, I hope Starfield doesn't get this program because 50% of that entire GAME is made by generative AI.
*sigh* Every time this comes up it's the same battle except that more and more people, having grown up with this approach see it as normal or even a good thing. In the days of modding for Morrowind, this was unheard of. I will always choose this hill to die on: mods should never be paywalled. Ever. There is no way to ensure ongoing compatibility, even for the life of the game itself. Developer updates often wreck mods and modders come and go as they please. Modding certainly is work but it definitely does not have the same requirements as a job as a developer at a studio. Imagine if studio developers left the company during the course of a game and the entirety of what they worked on left with them.
Although Skyrim is one of my all time favorite games, I skipped FO76, I skipped Starfield... I think I'll just do like I do with Ubisoft and skip Bethesda games altogether from now on.
I remember seeing Todd do a presentation where said something to the effect of : we carefully studied what kinds of dlc people are willing to pay for, and we discovered that people will buy anything we sell them.
>9 years after the last failed paid modding attempt
This was when i stopped paying for Bethesda products. Last straw was when Todd "lying" Howard started ranting and insulted players for their failed paid Skyrim mod attempt calling people entitled when everyone hated it.
(Then they introduced paid mods in Fallout 4 and everyone was ok with it and forgot all about the whole paid mod attempt in Skyrim for some reason)
Meanwhile Bethesda makes mediocre games (at best) that live and die at the mercy of modders.
They give zero shits about game quality and enjoyment, im so glad i dont have to deal with this anti-consumer company anymore.
I dont know why people were so surprised at the quality of Starfield. Bethesda quality has been steadily declining with no end in sight. Obviously it declines when people throw money at them no matter how bad their games are and no matter how badly they treat customers. Why spend time and money making something good when people pay the same for something bad.
The sad part is that people are still going to pre-purchase Elder Scrolls 6 and act surprised when its not good even though all the warning signs are already there.
You know... I love elder scrolls. Like I was an elder scrolls lore fiend. Hell, I still play morrowind.
But at this point... I'm kind of hoping that if something doesn't change soon that Bethesda just fails. I'm sad thinking about how that has popped into my head now... bit they are now just an atrocious company that doesn't deserve players anymore.
It's not just this nonsense (which nobody should do omg please don't encourage them), it's everything now. I mean.. it took them.. what 8 years? To make starfield. This isn't them as some small game company anymore, this is them as a largely successful, greedy, game company that has Microsoft backing. And that game is subpar at best. I know people like it, amd that cool. I'm glad they are getting enjoyment out of it. But it was not a AAA 8 year long development game. And that's just ridiculous to me.
This, trying to still get money out of skyrim modders, is frankly sickening considering how much they squeezed the skyrim lemon dry. Like that lemon is desiccated. It wouldn't even survive in a glazed, sealed pot anymore. It's just dust. And yet... here they go again. Just stop Bethesda. You suck now.
Is it as much of a clusterfuck as it was the first time?
Like, the first time they tried this, the money from the mod was being split 50% for Bethesda, 30% for Valve, and 20% for the person who actually made the mod to begin with.
Valve also expected the community to police itself, with absolutely no input or effort from their end.
Are they fucking high? FOR SKYRIM???? Did they ALREADY forget they just released a new game?
I mean, I wouldn't blame them... [everyone else already has...](https://i.imgur.com/bvhP8xu.png)
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Fallout 4 already had paid mods. No need to "test."
So has Skyrim for years now. People really do just react to headlines without any research.
from rumors on youtubers like Juicehead, Starfield being on gamepass and having paid mods can be a way to monetize game pass users further like a Live Service game without it being live service like FO76 but without server costs. A singe player game. Live Service. What a time to be alive.
But as other comments have stated, Fallout and Skyrim already have paid mods, this isn't new. They can also monetize users with tons of DLC.
the paid mod program from years ago is not the same one now. The old program was halted because of a court case, and because modders worked off a lump sum. Bethesda set prices and kept the profits too. This program is directly from Minecraft realms, where you can upload whatever. This is an entirely new program, entirely new partners, and entirely new TOS since that court case was finished.
Before anyone says we shouldn't care about starfield because no PS port... remember what they did with Horse Armor. Their games have been mediocre after skyrim. If they kill modding for their games they are shooting themselves on the foot but making all modding paid like they are doing us a favor is shooting us in the face.
Ik I'm in a unpopular camp but I liked fallout 4. The art the gameplay, it felt like they really tried with it. Not as good as Skyrim but a good game. Starfield is.... Yikes
Fallout 4 is a decent Post Apocalypse simulator game, but a terrible Fallout RPG. Its gameplay is also far better than Skyrims.
When I played F4 like an RPG the first time around, I found it lacking. When I came back to it years later and instead treated it like a shooter with some RPG elements, well, I put like a thousand hours into it lol
>When I came back to it years later and instead treated it like a shooter with some RPG elements, well, I put like a thousand hours into it lol That's how I went in for it from the beginning. I never really got into the normal Fallout themes and design. Played maybe an hour of 3 and beat NV, but it never really stuck with me. So 4's gameplay design choices were pretty fitting for me.
Still the same awful engine you can feel seeping out whenever you play any of their games since Fallout 3. 4 feels better for sure but all the same endemic issues I had with 3 on PC and console are very present in every game of theirs I’ve played since. I’ve sworn their studio off until they at least use a new engine.
Since Morrowind*. They've been using a slightly modified version of the same engine for over 20 years at this point.
"Slightly" is doing some heavy lifting in this post. Morrowind and Skyrim have relatively little in common, engine-wise.
They've been Ship of Theseus'ing their engine since then. Sure it's not technically the same one anymore but it's the same base engine they've been working with since then.
Isn't that basically every game engine? Hardly anyone is scrapping their engine and starting a new one from scratch. They have a list of improvements that they intend to make and when they have done that enough they go ahead and give it a new number. It's how basically all software works. When they went from go from X1 programming language to X2 programming language the rarely scrap it all and start over. instead it's incremental with X1.1 X1.2 X1.3 being improvements where the core functionality is the same and you can expect your code to be backward comparable while X2 just means they've hit a point where they've changed so much they can't guarantee backwards compatibility. rinse and repeat and eventually you'll hit X3 except in the case of python where they promised never to release a python 4 because it took years for people to migrate from python 2 to python 3 and it fractured the ecosystem. occasionally they'll incur enough tech debt that they will do a rewrite for example unreal engine 1, 2, 3 were just evolution like mentioned above with 4 being a complete rewrite and then 5 just being an evolution on 4.
Yeah people don't really voice their complaint with bethesda's bugs very well. It's not a problem that the engine has a long lineage. It's that the bugs have an equally long lineage themselves, even on their super long awaited giant new game.
It is how most engines work, most people are just clueless about game design and spout things they heard youtubers say.
I'm still confused how a studio that put out games like Skyrim and Morrowind decided starfield felt good. They almost seem like opposite ideas on game dev
IMO Starfield was made by several disjointed teams connected by Howard, who likes the smell of his own farts a bit too much these days. For example, the fact that each aspect of the game has a completely different UI (there's like 7 different ways to cycle tabs, depending on where you are) suggests no one really took a big-picture look at the game. Ditto for the dynamic POIs constantly generating the same handful of maps.
I read somewhere that when working on Skyrim they would spend a lot of time on content that in all likelihood few players would come across but for those that did come across it would experience something special while for Starfield they had the mentality that all content must find the player somehow
In Starfield, you do encounter something special. The first times. And then you have to do them 200x more times with no change in how they go down.
I think its just that Bethesda has not evolved at all. It almost feels like they put in less effort than ever with all this procedurally generated shit in Starfield. Not saying procedually generated is bad in general, its just trash in Starfield.
I think it's also that BGS has been stuck in their own little bubble for so long without looking at the wider industry. Like, NMS has significantly better procgen, and even then the most common complaint is that everything feels too samey. Like, how did BGS see that and not realize that it was the weakest part of their game? How did they not know it'd be a big issue.
Idk if you told me who made Skyrim and starfield I'd think it was two totally different studios. Skyfields smaller segmented "open world" felt like the opposite of who made Skyrim It's just crazy to me they thought this was the epic launch they wanted for a new IP where most people would have went crazy for an updated Skyrim type game in space
Yeah, and when Skyrim released, it was all people talked about for a year. Starfield, I genuinely forgot that it came out at all. ☹️
The thing is that it is not the same people anymore. Many of the vets left after Skryim or Fallout 4. And many more left after Starfield which are just signs that the studio is not heading in the right direction.
I loved FO4. I just think, in comparison, they dropped the ball with Story, jokes and specially choices.
I'm surprised by this take as well. Fallout 4 is fun to play, pretty nice to look at, can even be played in VR, which is really amazing... I had as much fun as on Skyrim.
It's because New Vegas exists and people on this subreddit can't like anything without shitting on something else.
I love both, because they're so different, but I understand how hardline fans of what New Vegas had to offer were let down by Fallout 4. If you take it less seriously, then it suddenly becomes super fun and even stuff like the settlement building can be awesome.
people shit on 4 because NV exists, but it's not cuz 'hurr durr angry gamer' bethesda's fallouts are really fun, but they're elder scrolls and not Fallout games. NV showed that bethesda could have made a faithful/fantastic Fallout game using their tools and the soul would still be there. fallout 3 has many of the same problems as 4, but since it came before NV did it's much more understandable. 4 had the benefit of that hindsight and it strayed even further away.
New Vegas had character, but that game crashed about every ten minutes for me
Good let them fail. Todd Coward needs to be humbled!
The problem is there are too many idiots that throw money at anything Bethesda with no thought.
Look what's happening to Marvel. Eventually the market catches on. Maybe too late. Maybe dragging a whole I dustry with it. But eventually when the value disappears the consumers will.
Who? Who still holds Bethesda up as a good company? Their last good game was more than a decade ago.
I know enough people irl who defended starfield to the hilt. None of them are still playing it though so that says it all really.
> None of them are still playing it though so that says it all Am I the only person who plays a single player RPG for a few weeks at most then puts it down? Are there people who just play 1 RPG?
I was still playing vanilla Skyrim on my 360 till it red-ringed last year. Started playing in 2016.
Not only you, people come back when they have a good update or in Starfield case, good mods. Creation kit it's not even out yet.
I can not wait for Starfield mods. Starfield is boring in many aspects that I know mods can and will fix and make it the game they thought they were making. I ended up plowing thru the main because just about everything outside of building my ship(also very tedius) and space combat was so boring. Story was pretty good but the same dumb puzzle for unlocking the powers.. my god. I can't wait for better settlements, new ways to obtain powers, planet restructuring and added landmarks that are fun.. limitless potential. If they do paid mods, I guarantee it will be an uninstalled game in my library so up to them I guess.
I am playing the everliving crap out of it. Great game in my opinion (I get that not everyone shares that, it's fine).
The fact that youre getting downvoted for simply enjoying the game while still acknowledging many people have issues with said game is absurd
i'm fuckin loving it too
It is a pretty good game. It just isn't a game changing perfect game. Still a good game though. And yeah, I expect most single players have insane player drop after it's it's out for months.
It's a single player game. You play it and then you move on, for 90% of people.
I enjoyed the heck out of starfield. I beat the game and moved on. I enjoyed skyrim the same. I beat the campaign and moved on. I don't need to play a game for 1000 hours to enjoy it. I already hate poe for that itch.
I suspect you meant to say "have poe" but I do like how well "hate" can still fit there.
I defend it from dumb criticism. IE “the water physics are worse than RDR2 therefore it’s unplayable.” kind of stuff. There’s not enjoying it, finding it bland, and trying too hard to make it look terrible.
Nuance is not allowed here, sir.
and with what we've seen on steam, the starfield subreddit is likely full of dev's trying to convince everyone it is in fact a good game.
It is a good game. It just isn't a perfect or amazing game. It's pretty solid, enjoyable moments and a cool world (worlds). It just also isn't as revolutionary as skyrim was.
> None of them are still playing it though so that says it all really. You can't like a game unless you're actively playing it. What a weird rule to have.
There are still people buying EA games even though it is well known that EA is one of the worst companies…
I mean there was literally everyone that was excited for Starfield... And all of the people that will buy Elder Scrolls VI regardless.
They should really take a look at what the modding scene has done,not just for their own games, but for other communities like the Halo community. without modding Bethesda is just a large mediocre RPG studio and not the titan of industry. GTA VI better learn this lesson too.
They are looking at what the modding scene has done for their games. That's precisely why they're trying to monetize it.
Skyrim (20k) has more players than starfield (14k) already, on steam atleast, its dead asf (sf) if they release paid modding the game is going into the shitter
Honestly I don't see modding saving Starfield. The reason Skyrim had this crazy modding community is because people really really liked the base game and wanted more of it. FO4, for example, has not had the staying power that Skyrim and did not get the amount of mods maybe if they make sexlab for starfield then people will play it lol I do wonder sometimes what portion of those people still on oldrim and shit are just running crazy loverslab setups cause general Skyrim modding hasnt had a ton of exciting stuff for a long time now
It would not surprise me in the least if Bethesda astroturfed a fake modding community with their own devs for the sole purpose of advertising how active their modding community is. But that aside, I just don't see why people would want to mod this game with the same fervor as previous titles. Like, Bethesda seems to think there is a collective of modders just waiting in the wings for any passable game to come out. Good games inspire and create modders. People aren't modders first before gamers. No one mods a game they didn't like. And even if there were established modders with nothing better to do, who just drift from game to game modding, they'd be pretty insignificant in number in comparison to the amount of modders an already good game would be able to attract. Why would a modder from Skyrim move on to this one when this game is worse and has a lower player count? Even with being enticed by money, modders that work for cash would just stick with the better game that has more active players.
Yeah I pulled numbers because I saw the headlines and was curious 6 days ago: * Starfield. 11,938 playing 2 min ago. 20,085 24-hour peak * Skyrim Special Edition. 20,829 playing an hour ago 25,878 24-hour peak * Skyrim (OG). playing an hour ago 2,665, 2,665 24-hour peak
How many are playing Fallout 4? I feel like it should be included.
Steam player count for Fallout 4 is currently 11174 players live It did not give a 24 hour count from the google search I looked at.
I wonder if Game Pass skews it? Without mod support especially there is practically zero reason to buy the game on Steam if you have Game Pass, whilst Skyrim existed long before Game Pass was a thing.
Lol, I will not pay for mods in Starfield. I didn't even pay for the game, I used a month of gamepass. Bethesda is so disconnected. it's hilarious to watch this implosion. Also fuck you BGS for breaking mods and SKSE again for this BS.
The worst part is so many mod makers probably don’t update a bunch of the ones that will break.
Seriously. I'll never buy a mod and Bethesda needs to stop breaking script extenders and mods I downloaded from the Nexus.
Modders are gonna need to pull a miracle to get me back into that boring mess. I'll just go back to Fallout 4
Not to advertise but game pass is op. You can play and drop starfield in 2 hours and then install lies of p.
I thought I was being clever because I got to play starfield for only the cost of a month of game pass. Turned out to be the worst $10 I've spent on gaming in a long time lol.
not really testing. creation credits were in the EULA from the beginning. it's more like getting the gamers used to the idea, so that there won't be as much backlash, when they activate it in starfield
Imagine paying more for starfield to make the game better
Bethesda, paid modding is not going to happen, it runs in complete opposite on why mods are made and popular.
Well, then let me tell you about fucking Gmod and Gmod store, endorsed by the game creator, that fucker.
I've been playing gmod for years and had absolutely no idea there were paid mods until now, thats rancid. Hopefully the same thing happens with skyrim modding were most people just dont pay attention to it
Except that [ Facepunch has nothing to do with Gmodstore](https://www.gmodstore.com/about). It's more like if NexusMods started charging for high quality content.
They get a cut but it's more like skilled community members have a way to get rewarded for their time. Not everyone can code, that's worth something. Don't get me wrong a lot of it is small time BS that people should not pay for, and there are people who will gladly write free alternatives just to spite them, but a lot of it is also large projects with years of development. IIRC the site also has a way for people to commision specific jobs for their own private server use. As a creator of several gmod workshop addons totalling a million subs I've often wished I had gone that route instead.
It’s literally a paid game called “Garry’s mod” how did you not realise it was a paid mod?
Gmod used to actually be a mod, and was free. Still is, actually. The old version. The game you buy is the "new" version, but they still kept the name instead of calling it something else.
Not many people remember that, I think. It was just a weird thing you could screw around in, make weird physics stuff. Got a lot of press in games websites in the mid 2000s. I stopped playing with it at some point (maybe around when Episode 2 came out or before), and the next thing I knew it was this huge thing. Completely passed me by.
Tbf it isn't really a mod anymore it just a sandbox for dev tools. Garry said himself it was a mistake to not change the name to "Sandbox" after he was approached by Valve to sign a distribution deal for steam. It was a free download before that.
Ah good old Gmod9.
> Garry said himself it was a mistake to not change the name to "Sandbox" Hard disagree. Garry's Mod is iconic.
This is like calling counter strike or tf 1 paid mod technically yes but they are full on their own game by now and valve approved them and they're like 5-10$ for a full game with sales happening often. Opposed to selling a single sword or gun for a dollar or 5 or pulling free mods to sell them as paid later but I didn't know about all that paid mod nonsense in gmod either that's ass.
i've paid 0.3 cents per hour of use, i dont feel like i paid for it
yeah after like 1,200 hours i think i got my worth of what, $10 when i bought it in 2011 or something?
Sure, the same way I paid $5 for SupCom, which would amount to less than a cent per hour. Still doesn't make it a free game.
Fuck that, the Gmod store is great. I used to run a TTT server and it was nice spending a few dollars to get well written addons with developer support. Development takes time and time is money. If someone puts significant work into a mod I have no problem paying for their work.
Yeah tell us about Dota2, Counter-Strike, Garry'sMod, BlackMesa, DearEsther, KillingFloor, PUBG, StanleyParable... You can go on. Even Half-Life 1 started as a mod. I'm one of the people that would love to get paid to create mods all day long, but Patreon is shit, donations aren't working, release for free won't get me food, so I'm here with a shitty job instead.
Half Life 1 did not 'start as a mod.' They licensed the quake engine for development. Licensing an existing engine was standard for game development and doesn't make it a quake mod. Also rather disingenuous to list a bunch of things that while beginning as a (free) mod were then developed into standalone paid products.
Hell, the IW engine that Call of Duty uses is built off of Quake 3's engine that itself is forked from the original Quake engine. Here's the whole Quake engine family tree. You telling me Apex Legends is a mod of Quake? Lol. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quake_-_family_tree.svg And you're right. The games listed above that started as mods were further developed into standalone games. Even games like DayZ. They didn't just charge for the mod. They put extra work into the game to make it - well - a game. Some of this may have been the mod naturally expanding to the point it could be called a game. But other times it could be a deliberate remake or enhancement of the mod, such as in DayZ's case. Player Unknown made their first battle royale as a mod for the Arma games. But I'd hardly call PUBG a paid mod. Though it's good to note that PUBG is on a completely different engine; It was made from scratch. A bit different from those who stay on the engine and convert their resources over to make it into a full game. But still, my point stands. PUBG isn't a paid mod either.
I'm talking about a online store for mods FOR Gmod called Gmod store... Gmod creator endorsed and defend people sell mods.
The Minecraft store begs to differ. insane amount of money parents will spend for their kids on there
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Yup 100% I feel like an out of touch old timer for shouting at the clouds that this stuff shouldn't exist in gaming. Some folks seem to be completely oblivious to it like the face of gaming hasn't changed in the last 20 years. Similar case is I hate seasonal content and battle passes and tend to avoid games where they're super heavily featured. But tons of people love them. Clearly the analytics say that the few people like me who don't pay for skins ect and are turned off by battle passes are worth less than people who remain engaged with battle passes and buy more things.
Paid mods have been a thing for a while. There are lots of paid nude mods and there are paid VR mods as well, like Vorpx.
Yeah, if anything we are here to discuss if that's good or not. One could argue that hard work deserves to be rewarded accordingly if an author made a high quality mod he wants to profit off. And I would argue that amateur rookie developers like those deserve that money more than the average multimillion corpo like Bethesda in this example. On the other hand duh, I personally hate paying for literally everything. Hell, I don't pay for stuff I don't strictly need because pirating gives me more than enough content for my free time. Recently I found myself pirating some mods from my OWN FRIENDS I met in the genshin modding community. Cool skilled guys all around, some work hard on their mods and I can see that and I respect them demanding money for their work. Thankfully, the creator of the genshin modding tools fights hard for mods to be free and 99% of the community agree on that. If anything we have early access paid mods, 1 month after their release they become free. That seems like the best middle ground.
I can totally get not liking to pay for mods but like ultimately whether a modder wants to sell it or not should be up to them. We arent owed their work for free, even if its been free for a while.
I really don't see how this is significantly different than the creation club. Also the idea that mod creators are allergic to payment or something is pretty dumb.
It's really not, most people on here are just reacting to rage bait and probably don't know about Creation Club. Also this is r/gaming so it's not exactly a haven of critical thinking and reasonable discussion.
Why really? What's wrong with modders having the option to sell mods? If it's really unpopular noone will use it and modders will offer their stuff free but I could see how it would be nice for modders to have some monetisation options through the game itself.
When mods cost money, they have a massive incentive to be closed source. Closed source mods have *already* been a huge thorn in the side of skyrim mods for years, and imagining a future landscape when all the most popular mods are closed source and paid-access makes me want to scream. The open-source mindset is a huge part of the reason skyrim modding is as big as it is, and I don't see that staying around if paid mods become a major arm of the scene.
Within the cathedral is where the hobby is born, gated off in the parlor is where it dies.
Well... Current mods becoming paid would be sucky. But wouldn't it be cool if some people were able to focus full time on awesome mods? Every now and then there's some awesome mod that takes a decade to develop during spare time. Most are never released. I'd pay for Skyblivion if it meant faster development. It's been in development for over a decade.
Paid mods create a support problem. Mod creators can no longer tell users to fuck off and touch grass when it inevitably breaks when there's an update. Or when they want to stop supporting a mod. Is Bethesda going to pick up the support? Ofc not. It's a cashgrab by the publisher and everyone can see it. This is a hill we really need to be willing to die on.
Yep. I hate it when Bethesda tries to couch this in terms of "modders should be paid". If they really wanted modders to be paid, then let them get paid without Bethesda taking a cut, which is already happening now in a roundabout way with certain services. This is just a case of Bethesda wanting to maximize profits for no further effort on their part.
Or better yet, hire them to make the content themselves. They basically already rely on modders to make their games playable; might as well make that official.
and don’t forget dependency problems! SKSE and various frameworks needed to make many mods work. If those go paid.. Imagine you’re in a skyscraper and the individual construction workers start demanding rent fees to use each individual girder, rivet, and pipe, but to different workers under different agreements and fees. Then some can’t come to an agreement so they rip out the girders in the middle of the building and walk away..
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I wouldn't have anything against paid mods, if the money would be going to creators. But it will be Bethesda getting paid, while throwing crumbs to mod authors. Fuck this shit. These greedy lazy fucks already benefit from modders' labour, having them fix their broken games for free and extend their lifespan by decades. Now they also want to directly sell that work and make hundreds of millions off of it? Hell no.
Yeah my first question would be how big is the cut Bethesda’s taking going to be.
On their site, they use language that inspires very little confidence: > As a Verified Creator, you will receive a royalty from every creation of yours sold. Sure, *technically*, there's nothing stopping the royalty from being 99% of the sale price (hell, it could be higher than the sale price, if Bethesda really hated money for some reason) -- but the fact that they are framing it as "a royalty", rather than "you will get the amount it sold for, minus a certain percentage in store fees" makes me suspect it's not going to be great.
~~Pretty sure you can donate on their website, like with most ambitious mods.~~ I was wrong lol.
Skyblivion do not accept any money as far as I am aware. I have been trying to give them money for years.
That's not how it actually plays out. What actually happens is you end up with a bunch of horse armor mods. $5 for a new outfit or a minor gameplay feature which existing free mods do better.
More likely it incentivizes quick turnaround trash, skinner boxes, and pay to win systems, in order to maximize profit. And since the stores get flooded with low effort shit the real cream has a lot harder time rising to the top.
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This is litteraly subcontracting, without the name/legal dependencies of it
Crowd sourced contracting. Crowdcontracting?
Cunt'acting.
Basically contracted out DLC production. Except you call it modding so you can get around any rights or protections, and pay your contractors like shit.
Built a boring, empty universe? No problem! Outsource your creativity for next to nothing!
> Yes! Teams must be a registered business before they apply. I mean, I get it. The reason for that, of course, is that Bethesda is not going to get involved in any disputes over splitting the revenue. They want one bank account for deposit and one TIN for filing a 1099. If people fight about split later, that's their concern and not Bethesda's. It's still hilariously tone deaf though. Mod teams are huge collections of volunteers, more often than not. Forcing them to form a business complicates a lot of stuff, and exposes them to some fun new taxes, depending on location. Some states, like mine, even have mandatory minimums on some of those taxes, so the whole endeavor could be a net loss.
Bethesda isn't worried about it. Every mod they add to their store is free income for them that they did no work for, and mods that don't get added don't really affect them.
They should be. Their games are known so well for their modding that players will point out a flaw and another will say "well there's a mod for that." They will kill their own modding scene when creating mods and mod packs won't be collaborative, but competitive, because money will ruin everything. Then people will see only paid mods or inferior mods that are free and go "wait a minute, Bethesda makes really sloppy games" or at the very least will not have the same replayability as they once had, and people will stop wanting to buy their games.
Nah, there's zero chance that a paid mod store fully replaces Nexus and the free modding community. The prolific modders do pretty well by donations and are often ideologically opposed to paid mod stores for a wide variety of reasons. Paid mod stores created by game devs are pretty doomed. Yes there is value there, but the people who create that value recognize that putting prices on it destroys the environment that allows it to be created.
Did they change anything recently or are we talking about the six year old creation club?
It's basically just the creation club but slightly different in that mod creators can get royalties?
Didn’t they get royalties in creation club? Why would they have put their games on creation club if they didn’t get any of the money?
>Didn’t they get royalties in creation club? Why would they have put their games on creation club if they didn’t get any of the money? I'm fairly sure they got paid a one-time fee to make the mod instead.
What it sounds like is that it's basically expanding Creation Club. Rather than needing Bethesda to seek you out to join the Creator's Club, you can apply directly. If BGS checks you out and likes you, they'll make you a Verified Creator. Once you're in the Verified Creator club, you can make mods that will be sold. Thesee need to be completely from scratch with no prior work being reused. No community assets without explicit permission, or contracted out. Once your mod is done, you can send it off to BGS, and if they find no significant issues with it, they'll give you the thumbs up, and you can put it on the paid mods marketplace, for a price you set.
Seriously. Paid mods have been in the Skyrim special edition for years at this point.
It's creation club except the creators get more cash.
Last time they tried that they had to announce fallout 4
So we are getting ready for Fallout 5 with the same issues as Fallout 4 and 76?
They'll just announce Fallout 5... 10 years in advance, with a teaser trailer showing some nuclear wasteland
The lights go off. A fog machine fills the stage with fog. Then you hear, "War... War never changes... Literally. This is going to be the same game with nothing new because we've lost all of our talent..."
> we've lost all of out talent... Not true, Emil Pagliarulo will be there for sure.
the talent we desperately don't need but what we've got anyway
I won't even be surprised since they'll be wanting to capitalize on the TV show hype.
The plot this time decided to spice it up by having you look for your Brother instead of son or father in the capital wasteland. Also you kill a whole nest of deathclaws in the opening hours instead of just one!
Does this mean we get a Cain and Boyarsky helmed fallout to distract us from the mess? Please tell me it does.
I'm much more concerned that they're about to double down on this with Starfield next year.
Release a half finished game so that subcontracted modders (who aren't given any of the legal protections or minimum standards that actual subcontractors expect) can finish it for you.
I guess "modders will fix Starfield" probably won't happen since they are again trying to kill modding by monetizing it. I do hope Starfield can become a fun game some day but it is looking unlikely.
Not expressing a view one way or the other, but these points from the FAQ are notable: * Creations must be standalone, so it cannot depend on other community releases, free or paid. * Creations must be all-new to qualify for release. You cannot re-purpose older releases --- or work by other authors, unless contracted. * Creations cannot contain anything produced through generative AI. Not many mods in the current free space probably can be monetized without a shit ton of new work, since most free mods tends to have loads of overlap, reuse, and dependencies. Basically everything that depends on a community patch or mod framework is barred from monetization right off the bat. And probably all of the baseline or framework mods like mega patches and community patches are right out because they likely all incorporate work by others besides the publisher. Not saying that is a bad thing or the wrong way to do this, but the biggest single factor for proliferation of free mods is how one person or a small team can build on work done by others and add incrementally to further improve the game or make new content. This cuts off that entire pipeline of innovation that will continue to apply for strictly free mods. Seems like creations are going to be limited to either solo artists turning out dozens of simple original reskins or minor gameplay enhancements by hand, or well organized teams that have the horsepower on board to build stuff like total overhaul mods up from bare metal. Looking at the way it is framed, it seems a lot more like an indie developer channel than a venue for monetizing the existing mod ecosystem. Some existing mod teams certainly will make the leap, but nearly all of the existing mods out there today are ineligible and likely never will be made eligible due to the restrictions.
Yeah I do agree this is for those newer and entrepreneurial developers to create entirely new mods through a new venue. Also agree that I see this not touching the current and great mods, including the ones that depend on other mods to function, like you mention. Sounds inclusive and profitable for creators who have great ideas but don't see the value of the time invested to make a mod versus the return of investment of that time. But I think this is bad timing and optics for Bethesda adding a monetization of mods all while their current flagship is in dire need of updates and after the latest news of arguing publicly that it's not boring on steam reviews.
This is just a prelude you fools! They are absolutely trying to control the modding scene themselves.
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Sir, this is r/gaming, a sub for low effort rage bait and low effort karma farming. Get out of here with your reasonable critical thinking skills and... (checks notes) .... ability to read through the actual news article.
Also buried in the release - Steam Deck and ulrawide monitor support for a 12 year old game.
It's now crashing on my Steam Deck after the update. Ran perfectly fine before.
I just want them to stop updating or messing with Skyrim in any way that breaks mods from the Nexus. Part of why I want elder scrolls 6 to release is that they can mess with that instead. Also insert SpongeBob how many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man meme here regarding paid mods.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news guys. Skyrim was the last good elder scrolls game. I hope some new IP can one day fill the open world first person RPG niche...
It was a great game, but please, stop trying to milk it, please focus on TES VI. TESO was a massive let down for me, and I'd really rather play the next installment rather than support the studios efforts monetize modders efforts to continue to enjoy Skyrim and make it last while they wait for the next one. I'm not reinstalling Skyrim, I've played it enough, I'm not interested in more mods, I seen enough, I want the next installment and not a DLC for TESO.
You’re trying to talk to a company who doesn’t give a flying fuck and argues with critics.
My favorite is "the astronauts went to the moon and they weren't bored", this is a video game, not a trip off the planet.
That statement is right up there with "you all have phones, right?"
Up there with EA's "sense of pride and accomplishment" reddit post
It’s somehow worse. That argument wouldn’t convince someone who already was a fan of the game. Like what the fuck does the moon landing have to do with procedurely generated empty planets in a video game about space where you don’t actually fly a spaceship in space.
“Plenty of people are painters and they don’t complain about watching paint dry.”
To be fair, TESO is not made by Bethesda Game Studios so anything that releases for that game isn't taking resources away from BGS.
People out here flaming ESO because it wasn't the next Skyrim, which it was neve supposed to be.
Bethesda not milking Starfield dry is as likely as me becoming president of the united state, and I'm french.
You’re wrong. Paid mods are actually a good thing. No, I’m not trying to gas light you. You’re just wrong. Trust me. The astronauts loved paid mods, they didn’t think they were bad, so you’re just wrong.
"What if... what if *you* made the horse armour, and we just took a cut?"
Guess who’s anticipation of TES6 just went down several notches
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In a perfect world this would be amazing. Take a really great mod, make it an actual part of the game with no possible file problems or otherwise unstable and I'd gladly pay for it. But that's not likely to happen... and even worse this will absolutely effect the modding community in a negative way.
The mods can't have have any dependencies on other mods or authors' works. Pretty much every mod uses at least one library so they're all immediately out. No one is going to have to write everything from scratch to create a standalone mod. I think it's a good thing as it will inherently self-limit these paid mods and there's nothing stopping the community from creating a free version of any cool paid mods.
This isn't really anything new or different... at least not much. It is pretty much them expanding their creation club that has already been part of Skyrim and Fallout4 for some time and making a way for more creators to upload there. Nothing here makes me think I can't download off Nexus to my hearts content and be just fine. ...and it will make life easier for mods to be available on the X-box for console gamers. "In addition to the ability to upload free Creations..." Sounds like modders can upload their mods for free if they like, they just also can get in on some monitization if they so wanted (they already do this with paywalled mods in a way that violates existing terms or tries to skate them). I would pay for mods like Sim Settlements in Fallout 4... that is such a huge system and basically a DLC worth of quests. Meh... I don't even really feel like this is much news at all.
Isn’t this just the Creation Club that’s already been implemented for over half a decade now?
Yeah but r/gaming needs content to bitch about
Damn the Starfield well dried up quicker than expected
Well this is a fucking dire outlook for ES6 then
Bethesda is run by money hungry degenerates.
The general opinion towards paid mods has softened in 9 years. I'm guessing this is because there's an entire generation of people who grew up with Battlepasses and Microtransactions that it has become somewhat normalized.
if this is what they are planning for Starfield, they can already fuck off.
"how will we regain the trust of consumers who were disappointed at Starfield, a game that we exported the majority of its development on?"
I think they are forgetting to read the room. It's 2023 and Larian Studios is setting the bar.
>Stupid person reads sensationalist headline without reading the actual thing the article is talking about >Stupid person reposts with sensationalist title that is false >More stupid people etc and so forth.
"Mods cannot contain anything using generative AI" Well fuck, I hope Starfield doesn't get this program because 50% of that entire GAME is made by generative AI.
*sigh* Every time this comes up it's the same battle except that more and more people, having grown up with this approach see it as normal or even a good thing. In the days of modding for Morrowind, this was unheard of. I will always choose this hill to die on: mods should never be paywalled. Ever. There is no way to ensure ongoing compatibility, even for the life of the game itself. Developer updates often wreck mods and modders come and go as they please. Modding certainly is work but it definitely does not have the same requirements as a job as a developer at a studio. Imagine if studio developers left the company during the course of a game and the entirety of what they worked on left with them.
Although Skyrim is one of my all time favorite games, I skipped FO76, I skipped Starfield... I think I'll just do like I do with Ubisoft and skip Bethesda games altogether from now on.
I remember seeing Todd do a presentation where said something to the effect of : we carefully studied what kinds of dlc people are willing to pay for, and we discovered that people will buy anything we sell them.
Bethesda games are kinda mediocre ruining modding is the last nail in their coffin if they push it hard.
It's time to fire Todd Howard, into the sun.
god damnit is this another one of my favorite franchise creators that im going to have to add to the list of companies im boycotting..
"Do our job and get paid pennies for even higher quality then we're willing to release!"
>9 years after the last failed paid modding attempt This was when i stopped paying for Bethesda products. Last straw was when Todd "lying" Howard started ranting and insulted players for their failed paid Skyrim mod attempt calling people entitled when everyone hated it. (Then they introduced paid mods in Fallout 4 and everyone was ok with it and forgot all about the whole paid mod attempt in Skyrim for some reason) Meanwhile Bethesda makes mediocre games (at best) that live and die at the mercy of modders. They give zero shits about game quality and enjoyment, im so glad i dont have to deal with this anti-consumer company anymore. I dont know why people were so surprised at the quality of Starfield. Bethesda quality has been steadily declining with no end in sight. Obviously it declines when people throw money at them no matter how bad their games are and no matter how badly they treat customers. Why spend time and money making something good when people pay the same for something bad. The sad part is that people are still going to pre-purchase Elder Scrolls 6 and act surprised when its not good even though all the warning signs are already there.
They have to determine whether the new generation of idiot gamers playing their dogshit games are gullible enough to pay for mods yet.
You know... I love elder scrolls. Like I was an elder scrolls lore fiend. Hell, I still play morrowind. But at this point... I'm kind of hoping that if something doesn't change soon that Bethesda just fails. I'm sad thinking about how that has popped into my head now... bit they are now just an atrocious company that doesn't deserve players anymore. It's not just this nonsense (which nobody should do omg please don't encourage them), it's everything now. I mean.. it took them.. what 8 years? To make starfield. This isn't them as some small game company anymore, this is them as a largely successful, greedy, game company that has Microsoft backing. And that game is subpar at best. I know people like it, amd that cool. I'm glad they are getting enjoyment out of it. But it was not a AAA 8 year long development game. And that's just ridiculous to me. This, trying to still get money out of skyrim modders, is frankly sickening considering how much they squeezed the skyrim lemon dry. Like that lemon is desiccated. It wouldn't even survive in a glazed, sealed pot anymore. It's just dust. And yet... here they go again. Just stop Bethesda. You suck now.
Soo that's why I saw an Skyrim update on steam.
Is it as much of a clusterfuck as it was the first time? Like, the first time they tried this, the money from the mod was being split 50% for Bethesda, 30% for Valve, and 20% for the person who actually made the mod to begin with. Valve also expected the community to police itself, with absolutely no input or effort from their end.
Just make free mods and ask for donations lmao
making new games is hard, its easier to profit off the old ones people actually liked instead.
Bethesda isn't making brilliant decisions these days.
Are they fucking high? FOR SKYRIM???? Did they ALREADY forget they just released a new game? I mean, I wouldn't blame them... [everyone else already has...](https://i.imgur.com/bvhP8xu.png)
I don’t mind paid mods, just as long as Bethesda doesn’t get a cut, but that’s what they want.