The latest Skyrim Special Edition update has upset the modding community and has the potential to leave a dent in their wallets.
Today’s Skyrim Special Edition update was designed to craft an enhanced platform for the community to use when exploring community-made mods. This included a series of UI changes, alongside multiple unfavorable tweaks in the eyes of the player base. The modding community might be familiar with this already as this is what the previous system did already. The update, in Bethesda’s eyes, is meant to “empower developers and enthusiasts to bring their Creations to a wider audience.”
First spotted by PCGamer, as of Dec. 5, gamers now have to pay for certain mods in Skyrim. But while introducing a paywall for a wide selection of mods, the 1.6.1130 Skyrim update broke a whole bunch of other pre-existing ones in the process. Countless mods were also broken in the process of today’s update. However, there were members of the Skyrim modding community who came to the defense of Bethesda. Gamers claimed this is a typical problem that arises after there’s a substantial update, and today’s changes were no different. Odds are, these will be fixed in due time.
The other main gripe in the community was the fact that mods now cost a certain amount of credits to own and can be almost insignificant in impact. Players reported on social media having to pay five euros to simply purchase a weapon mod in Skyrim, which adds one weapon in total. Players openly told the idea of paid mods to “get fucked” and claimed Bethesda’s choice to introduce such a feature was “great proof of Bethesda’s continually tone-deaf perspective.”
This isn’t the first time paid mods were a potential part of the Skyrim scene. In 2015, paid mods were heavily critiqued for a multitude of reasons including the sheer price of each one, but mostly due to the cut spread amongst all parties. Spreading the pay across multiple businesses like Valve and Bethesda meant the modders themselves were left short-changed. Bethesda later backed down, leaving the modding community in harmony for roughly half a decade.
We’ll just have to see if Bethesda backs down once again. However, now that all the systems are in place for an edition released in 2016, it seems like players will have to pay for mods from now on.
