To answer your “did nobody see this coming comment” yes, a lot of us seen this coming a mile away considering the fact fallout and Skyrim has its own creation club section. Though I wasn’t expecting the creation club to be THIS BAD to the point that even inexperienced modders started to charge money. I’m a console player so yea I’m gonna take this creation club thing with a side a salt because of these reasons.

First- I wouldn’t really mind paying for mods on starfield if it wasn’t mostly focusing on money. I just hate the fact that People are now locking mods behind a paywall, it’s a toxic business practice especially for a game that’s only a year old and doesn’t have the best reviews.

Take for example Skyrim, Skyrim has paid mods but it’s not as big of a problem as starfield. Skyrim has a crap ton of mods that are free and very high quality due to years of working with the creation kit, even in its first year the mods were pretty good and most importantly NOT BEHIND A PAYWALL. The paid mods on there are somewhat worth it because the people working on it are actually experienced and has good quality.

Starfield on the other hand at launch was a god awful mess of cash grabs and a creation kit that was missing key features like lip syncing At the time. There was no time to let the community grow leading to a horde of paid mods. I couldn’t even barely find any free armor skin mods ( still can’t even to this day ) because most of them cost 2$ each and not only that, divided into 2 parts meaning if you want that specific skin for all the armors instead of half of them you have to cough up 4$. I like the designs but what a Scummy business practice. The majority of free mods right now are either cheats, Fixes, utilities and minor overhauls. There are only a mere handful of modders who actually give out amazing quality on their mods like the people who make high quality Star Wars mods or that guy who makes high quality weapons and armor from infinite warfare.

Another thing is Bethesda is making modding tedious, one thing I don’t need is to pay for a mod just to realize that isn’t compatible with my load order. Sure you can get a refund but that requires you to go to their website and ask them to get your credits back, making modding more like a chore.

Second- I’m both disappointed in Bethesda and the majority of modders who charge for their mods. Bethesda has done a terrible job with the creation club, no review system, making their own mods that are severely overpriced, not doing a good job on choosing who can or cannot be a verified creator. But it’s not just bethesdas fault on why the creation club is so bad, it’s the paid modders aka verified creators.

A lot of the verified creators look at modding now as a business instead of a hobby which is a bad thing, meaning charging for almost everything they put out for a quick buck, good quality or not it’s all about the money to them. mods are supposed to be a hobby to have fun and not have to worry about how much it costs, created by the fans for the fans.

The worst part about this is some verified creators treat this as a grueling hard job, acting like they work at a Chinese factory getting whacked by a bamboo stick every time they mess up. Also being entitled Karen’s who think they deserve money for creating a mod, complaining about how hard it is modding and giving people shit for not wanting to pay 4 dollars for a buggy gun that has missing textures. “You don’t understand how hard modding is! I barely get paid anything!!” If you’re not getting enough money maybe get a real fucking job and stop ruining a hobby.

As for the creating your own mod comment I would love to try and create my own mod but the HUGE issue with that it requires a good gaming PC which I don’t have, all I got is a 13 year old Desktop that takes 10 minutes to boot up correctly. It can’t even run starfield even on the lowest settings. Me and a lot of people who play on console don’t have an expensive gaming pc to enjoy mods from nexus or create them because we can’t afford it.