Every now and then we have the very kings of the modding scene slap down the biggest face-palm worthy screw ups that make me just want to scream. If anyone should be championing the mod industry it should be Bethesda- but their weirdness around Fallout London, their handling of updates and the ever ongoing war with the free modding world just seems so utterly bizarre. And I know this comes from a place of love, and that's what blows my mind up even more! There are some absolutely certifiable morons out there who twirl their tiny minds around and go "Yep, Bethesda want to ruin modding so that... people don't mod more." And though I suspect those people lack the ability to turn on a computer let alone read- let me spell it out in simple words. A healthy modding community makes people buy their games more- they aren't stupid. Or at least, they aren't stupid in that fashion.
Bethesda's stupidity more spawns from their frank inability to get literally anything right when it comes to making this space better for mod authors. Providing a way for modders to turn their passion into a career choice. Something that should be lauded by anyone who has sat down and played an incredible mod and went- wow- that should have been a DLC released by Bethesda! Those kinds of experiences should be championed! Heck, if I were running Bethesda I'd be looking at ways to make deals with some of these mod authors to get some of these mods published as semi-official DLC. I bet console Fallout players would love a go at Fallout London! You know, if they didn't have to deal with the 4GB modding limit...
This all began when Bethesda tried their hardest to build a paid infrastructure into Steamworkshop- allowing modders to charge whatever they please in order to recoup the investment for the work that they put in. Now Steamworkshop is already an iffy platform for mods- it's designed to be as convenient as possible and that means it really works best with games that have very specific styles of Modding support. Despite being some of the most modded games of all time, Bethesda titles are actually somewhat atypical when it comes to the way they handle mods so most even somewhat interesting and complex mods can't even be sensible run off of Steamworkshop. What that meant was that the very first foot forward into paid mods was price tags stuck onto armour mods or retextures or basic fishing systems. Stuff that would go up free anywhere else being charged for eye-brow raising price tags that really coloured the kind of person who is quickest to these sorts of systems- the opportunists.
Now I understand the desire to make money as much as the next man, but there is always a balance to be struck between exploitation and potential for good and I find that those most predatory tend to lean the scales the bad way. If paid mods were to become regular for high quality productions that would really blow open the field for great mods to suck in even more development fundamentals for the hopes of real returns. Like indie game development only in a much more condensed field to a much more receptive audience- this really could be the shot in the arm that Bethesda games need to get back to their modding heydays. But you really need to create a division between those that actually want to make something and those that want to make a buck.
The next version of paid mods was the curated Bethesda mods offered via the creation club, wherein Bethesda worked hand-in-hand with mod makers in order to develop specialised pieces of mini content that would slide into their existing games. Good in theory but I think Bethesda severely overestimated how much work they would need to put in just to make sure that all of these mods were up to shipping standard across all platforms. Bethesda really are in the market for one of those passive profit generators and having to dedicate an entire department to working with content creators to develop their mods and ship something worthy of the Bethesda stamp of approval is not. But to be honest- that might just be what they need to do.
The latest iteration of mods has been a Bethesda self-hosted system wherein anyone can download mods directly from their servers and it is... well it's messy. The service hosts Bethesda's own mods, mods from their partners and mods from the public all on the same disorganised page with pretty much no filtering options whatsoever. (Someone doesn't want to code their Dictionaries, and to be fair- I don't blame them. Coding Dictionaries sucks.) And in that mess comes an old problem in a new form- because whilst Bethesda are partnering with certain mod authors once again in order to decide who gets monetisation privileges - they aren't policing what actually gets monetised. Thus we're right back to square one.
You have mods that are reshuffles of Nexus offerings now being sold for a premium on a storefront, you have retextures with price tags, single outfit packs, basic cheat items. And then you have an entire fully playable and ludicrously robust faction built for Skyrim, fully voiced new companions for Starfield that are miles more interesting than the base crew. All of these mods are stuffed in the same melting pot and treated with the same level of respect by a terrible sorting system which relies on the free market to raise the best to the top but lacks any review metrics with which to make a system like that work. Atop of that- there's this little thing wherein in some mods disable achievements and others don't and Bethesda refuse to be consistent about what makes one achievement friendly and what makes another not. High quality non-Bethesda mods that add new playable content- can't be played with Achievements. Which, for a game that is built to accommodate a single save file across multiple years of content, is a bit of a deal breaker for some out there. Me included.
Bethesda want the rewards for as little effort as possible and I just don't think that's how paid mods are going to work. I think this latest system is so close to being good and with just a bit of oversight and improvement we could finally have a system for paid mods that are worth a damn. Single outfit mods costing $5 is a bit ridiculous, but we can't even have conversations like that when someone else is genuinely flogging a weapon mod that boosts your max health when equipped. Literal 'I fooled around the creation kit for five minutes' level work with a price tag underneath it is wild! Nothing ever comes of nothing, to quote Lear- and Bethesda really need to speak up lest they end up miring those fortunes that so blind them.
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