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Starfield is Going to be “a Modder’s Paradise” – Todd Howard (gamingbolt.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Howard says Bethesda Game Studios is looking to keep expanding its support for the modding community with the upcoming space-faring RPG.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (15 children)

“One of the things that I’ll call out is, it’s important for us not just to enable that, but to participate,” he said. “To make is easy for them, to make this where they can make it not just a hobby, but a career."

What they really want: a sanitized official mod store that dominates over the Nexus and Loverslab. I'm not sure how they're going to pull that off, but I fully expect them to try.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

In theory, modders asking to be compensated for their work is not that outlandish of an idea, however in practice there are a ton of problems that need to be solved when going down this rabbit hole:

IP and ownership: Is the mod really 100% originally created by the seller?
Compatibility: The game is going to be recieving big updates, is there a garantuee that the mod will remain compatible, or be updated as well?
Dependencies: Does the mod require other mods? Are the creators of that mod OK with their work being used to make money by others? What if the required mod breaks or becomes unavailable?
Load order: Anyone who's modded Skyrim or Fallout before knows how fickle mods can be, often requiring specific configs and tweaks to the load order. Is Bethesda going to offer tools for that alongside their store?
Quality Assurance: Am I even getting my money's worth? Is there a refund policy?

All of these proved to be major issues when they tried a paid mod store for Skyrim. Stolen mods, a fishing mod that required an animation framework mod who's creater demanded the fishing mod be taken down, mods that had major incompatibilities with other popular mods, and bought mods just inserting themselves wherever they felt like in the load order.

If Bethesda wanted to create an official mod store, it would need to be carefully curated, with contracts with the modders requiring them to keep their mods updated, and seriously upgraded tools for configuring purchased mods. Honestly, I just don't quite see it happening.

[–] Mnemnosyne 1 points 2 years ago

Compatibility could be solved the Paradox way. Most of their games I can roll back to a specific patch. So if a player pays for a mod, and later game updates break it, as long as the player can roll back to the last patch on which the mod worked correctly, the player still has what they paid for.

All the other problems remain though.

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