'Unity' indeed...
I genuinely thought we had more time on our hands before this conversation flared up and arguments over the world's most annoying game of hot potato fizzled into a flurry of inconsonant noise. I mean I knew it was going to happen, from the second we saw that glimpse of the Starfield main page with that cheeky little announcement window up in the top right I knew that was going to be the place that Bethesda advertise their 'Creation Club' content from whenever that starts going live. We've been through this all before with Fallout 4 so we know how it goes. Creation Club is patched in, content starts being sold, people start to get upset about the existence of paid mods equating it to microtransactions. Efficacy, morality plays, everything goes around in circles but nothing gets solved. Except... can I have an advance on that discourse please, waiter?
Because lo and behold, one of the very first mods to hit for Starfield, long before the creation tools have been released, even before the nude mode by my great surprise, was the mod that allowed for DLSS to work with Starfield- NVidia's personal tool for AI upscaling of GPUs; which some see as essential given that Starfield launched at supported 30 frames per second. (I do mourn for 60 and wonder what this game would look like at that level, but I wouldn't call the lesser rate experience ruining or anything.) However, the creator of this mod, who had advertised his work on it leading up to launch, placed access of the mod behind his very own paywall and, I am told from a second hand source, even put up piracy measures on the mod. (Next level mod publishing!) And of course, predictably, this has sparked outrage about paid mods.
Personally I think this is fine. The creator is performing a service for the game in creating something that most people wouldn't know how to do, if he wants to ask for compensation that all the more power to him. I've also heard that the mod works exactly as intended so I have no issues with this at all to be honest, but I can kind of wiggle my way around to seeing why the aggrieved are annoyed too. The most coherent arguement that can really be made against this sort of thing is that the Starfield game doesn't belong to this mod maker and they are profiting of it for a bit of pocket change digging into a frustration that many people are having thanks to Bethesda's annoying little AMD partnership. Now if this were a Nintendo game, that would be grounds for execution- but Bethesda actually permit and encourage this kind of conduct, so even then the aggrieved run up short.
But this does go some way to set up a precedent for what exactly would become of modding going forward. Is everything going to be charged and priced one way or another? Are those scary 'skin' sections of each gun going to be breeding grounds for bad actors to charge $15 for the colour blue? Just to get under Angry Joe's skin? I don't personally see this fostering a community of paid modifications simply because most people don't really see game modding as a outlet beyond a creative one. Game mods are deeply set into the freeware culture of the internet, a tough little holdout of the early phase web which stands as a direct opposition towards what people want the web to become. That being said, the monetisation of a few, curated, pieces of modded content isn't so bad either. Just so long as, you know, we have some standards. Less 'Fallout 4 CC content' and more 'Skyrim CC content' please.
I suppose I have to get more specific, don't I? With Fallout 4 Bethesda took a very granular approach to the way they commissioned Creation Club content- it was all stuff like colour skin packs for weapons and the Pipboy, race swap packs for Dogmeat and maybe a new weapon to throw into the lootpool here or there. Skyrim's was a bit more interesting, with mods that added new legendary gear from previous games with a tiny morsel of quest-stuff explaining their existence and the customary house mods because everyone needs their bread and butter. Skyrim also got it's very own Survival Mode added through Bethesda which was overall serviceable, but again- not a patch on the very popular Frostfall mod which already exsisted. Skyrim's Creation Club content felt like some small modicum of thought went into it, Fallout 4's felt like a procession on inanity.
Starfield's will be interesting to behold. On one hand the very nature of a procedurally generated universe means the team can throw in something as a small as a generation update into the Creation Club storefront- although I wonder if people will respond positively to such a difficult to quantify product being sold atop the base game. On the otherhand, skin packs seem like an unfortunate given. Maybe new ship manufacturers could be interesting. Possibly even the re-inclusion of the concept of Unique Legendary guns- which is a sorely missed absentee from the Starfield offering plate. Or maybe they could just charge for a UI update to fix the godawful inventory screens. (I'm joking, of course. That really would cause an outrage if Bethesda charged for that.)
The Creation Club adds a layer of responsibility and accountability on Bethesda so that a certain standard of quality needs to be met in order for prices to be drawn in the sand, and I think this forms the only real healthy way that paid modding can thrive. Of course, I also think that Bethesda have been lax in establishing this in a real way with their past games. Skyrim's CC content dried up within a year, Fallout 4 stopped trying after the GNR mod- if Bethesda really wants to establish Starfield as the 'most modded game ever' not just on consoles, I hope that means a dedicated team is being set up to work alongside the community to make really transformative and interesting additions onto the Starfield product. I think Starfield could be more than just a new frontier for modding, it could become defined by community contribution if Bethesda play their cards right. This is the maiden voyage of a franchise embracing modding, afterall- the sky is the limit!
So as you can likely tell, I am a proponent for paid modding- with stipulations and balances. And I think Nexus and it's offerings should still remain bastions for hobbyists to explore their talents because that's just a healthy resource to hopefully maintain. The DLSS situation is frustrating to be sure, but no great evil is being perpetrated here- just an enterprising coder doing good work for a small fee. Maybe in doing so he'll have soaked up the virginal battering for peeling the 'paid-mod' seal off of Starfield before official support has even begun! Maybe when Creation Club lands it'll do so without the fiery vitriol it's been subjected to before and maybe this time it'll get enough support to grow into something truly special. Eh, you never know...
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