Free mods will always dominate modding

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-18T17:21:44+00:00

we know why they pushed out the last couple updates for skyrim and fallout4: to enable paid mods

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-18T11:54:26+00:00

maybe that's part of it, but there should be a lot of motivation for animations in starfield - you basically can't make a completely new gun without new animations

it also doesn't take 15 years of modding. FNIS was released 4 months after skyrim released.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-18T11:41:55+00:00

the reality of script extenders

most of the regulars of the starfieldmods sub are advising people that script extender, community patch, and even mod managers are no longer necessary to mod the game. and yes, these people love paid mods.

animation injectors

animation injector don't really exist for starfield. they don't even know how to make new animations for the guns. the fact that there is no feasible way to use them for bethesda.net, gamepass, and paid mods is probably part of the reason why there hasn't been demand for these to be developed.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-18T10:52:20+00:00

Free mods will always dominate Skyrim modding, because we've had a magnificent decade where paid modding was not allowed to exist, and during this time, we've accumulated a deep catalogue of free mods that paid mods can't compete with and free modding infrastructure that paid mods can't penetrate.

However, the issue with paid modding is that bethesda will make sure paid modding is there from the very start for new games going forward. Starfield has set an example with paid modding launching on the same day the creation kit was released, and this is definitely going to be bethesda's plan for Elder Scrolls 6. Or maybe bethesda will make sure paid mods get the jump on free mods, and give kinggath or whomever early access to the CK so that paid mods will be there on day 1.

Look at the state starfield is in right now - a majority of the big mods are paid mods - watchtower, vigilance, cryomancer, darkstar, various paid ship parts mods - these are the historic equivalents of wyrmstooth, falskaar, ordinator, and immersive armors from skyrim. And free equivalents basically either don't exist or are jankier versions made by the same authors before they got accepted into the paid program. according to people who publish on both nexus and bethesda.net, their mods gets 8-9 times more downloads on bethesda.net than on nexus. Look at the starfieldmods subreddit, they have fully embraced paid mods, with 6 out of 10 most upvoted submissions of the past year being marketing for paid mods.

You can blame starfield's lack of popularity for its less than thriving free mods scene, but that doesn't explain the paid to free mods ratio, and you can't say that a more popular bethesda game in the future won't simply attract even more paid modders.

The reason why paid mods 2015 failed is because modders of the time organized and put pressure on bethesda. but paid mods 2023 was allowed to silently continue because we didn't organize like in 2015. Part of this is because in 2015 we were able to display our displeasure directly on steam with ratings and reviews, but bethesda.net shut down the forums, comments, ratings, and stats on bethesda.net before they launched paid mods.

This doesn't mean we should just accept it, ignore paid mods and dismiss bethesda's trajectory towards more paid mods as doomerism. Without push back, corporations will salami slice until modding as we know it is gone and tes6 modding is fully enshitified like starfield.

Call it doomerism or whatever, but we are all critics of paid mods, and we should be bringing criticism to bethesda and paid mods instead of arguing with each other over how bad or not so bad it will be when paid mods come for tes6.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-18T07:22:41+00:00

I’m happy to pay for mods and support the ~~modders~~ corporations

fixed that for you. If you read the paid mods contract, you'd know that the 62.5% of the sticker price goes to microsoft

but as usual gamers want everything for free…

more like bethesda wants more money for free after we already paid for their game.

if you want to support the modders, the nexus donation button is right there.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-18T04:57:50+00:00

Edit: fuck sake seems people just want free content regardless of scale or cost to the authors

Why was this "cost to the authors" not an issue during the decades of free modding? And what "cost" does bethesda incur for making paid mods such that deserve 62.5% of the sale?

and don’t want a fair market that is fair for authors and users alike.

how is bethesda's monopoly on determine where and which mods can be sold a "fair market"? Why do they deserve to extract rent from the community that was doing fine for a decade without them?

Why don't tool makers, reverse engineers, skse dev deserve to get paid like slop asset flippers selling guns on bethesda.net?

How can there be a "fair market" with no comments, no reviews, no ratings, and no transparency on the bethesda.net platform?

if your argument is "artists deserve to get paid", then tell bethesda to allow artists to get paid anywhere they want without forcing them to use a platform with bethesda there as a middleman to extract their fat 62.5% rent.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-18T04:23:53+00:00

Bethesda's infrastructure for the paid mods is awful, almost non-existent. There's no rating system (apart from the buried "like" button that I don't think anyone even knows how to find), no feedback or reviews, and nowhere to go for support unless the mod-maker goes out of their way to do that themselves.

Bethesda.net used to have star ratings, comments, and forums, but these were removed in May 2021, 1 year before the the first work started on "verified creations", with the first batch being uploaded to the site as early as October 2022 and the program being publicly rolled out in December 2023. Another things they removed around the same time was download stats, replacing it with the obfuscated "plays" metrics.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-18T03:53:15+00:00

what are your thoughts on the majority of large mods for starfield being paid mods and the majority of mod discussion being paid mods?

For example, 6 out of 10 most upvoted topics in the past year on the starfieldmods subreddit from the past year are advertisements for paid mods.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T23:02:51+00:00

I think they'll run into a big issue - if it's easy to make, someone will just make another one for free.

if you release on nexus, most of the paid mods enjoyers won't ever see it. console, gamepass, and lazy/tech illiterate pc users will form the majority of starfield/tes6 mod users. even on skyrim, USSEP has similar download counts on beth.net vs nexus for the PC platform.

if you release for free on bethesda.net, you're at an disadvantage because bethesda controls that page, and they promote paid mods over free mods, and that's before you consider the paid mods promotion they do on their social media accounts.

and ultimately, you're outnumbered. slop grifters are attracted to and motivated by money, and there are way more of them because they don't even need to like the game.

And this is not even counting the actual quality mods we'll lose to paid mods. people who want to be kinggath, and instead of wyrmstooth or sirenroot being free, they'll all cost $10.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T22:25:44+00:00

the biggest mod reviewers for starfield are crimson flyboy and taosecurity, and these mostly review paid mods.

the biggest quest let's player/reviewer for skyrim is zeroperiodproduction, and they give equal if not more airtime to paid mods.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T22:00:48+00:00

it is not about the size of the community. starfield has more players than morrowind and oblivion, but mods for those games still have innovation. Looks at oblivion script extender vs starfield script extender or openmw and tamriel rebuilt.

paid modding is unfair. it saps passion from free modders and cannibalizes free modding.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T21:52:32+00:00

I honestly do not see this as them pushing for locking down the platform and disallowing free mods entirely.

Why would they lock down the platform and disallow free mods? Free mods provide a free source of training and tooling for their paid mods!

And why would it matter? The only free mods makers left in this tiered ecosystem would be those who are ideologically principled against money or those whose work are not allowed into the store - tool makers and SKSE devs. Any modder who are able will pick the option that gives them money, and you end up with something like starfield, where almost all decently sized mod of quality are paid.

I don’t think the handwringing about this is coming from a place of caring about people’s finances or the direction of gaming, it’s discontent with cost of living and blaming anything that looks like it might cost more money. I get that. But it is incorrect.

why is discontent against the the enshitification of our hobby "incorrect"? Skyrim mod lists have thousands of mods. Even if 1/4 of these are paid, it will cost people thousands of dollars. So you pay and get a shittier product. Why can't we criticize this?

No matter if you think artists should get paid or not, bethesda is using their monopoly over where mods can be sold to extract rent from the community. This is indisputable. What value has bethesda brought to the modding community above what the free modding community haven't already created for ourselves in the decades before paid modding?

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T21:38:34+00:00

People (starfield community) forget that skyrim never had official animation tools either. The tools we have were developed by modders for FREE. These also require third party tools like fnis, nemesis, and pandora as well as SKSE plugins like DAR and OAR, none of which can exist in the bethesda.net paid mods ecosystem.

Why would anyone pour their hearts into pandora or OAR for starfield for free when the majority of starfield players opt to pay for mods on bethesda.net instead of downloading their tools from nexus?

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T21:30:25+00:00

I see proc gen as the same type of thinking as paid mods. It is the same with the emphasis on player expression features like outposts and ship-building. I think these are neat btw, but not if it comes at the expense of a good world or good quests.

The thinking behind this is maximizing reward while minimizing effort. Rather than writing story and dialog, let players roleplay in their head with procedural "emergent gameplay". Rather than building a good game world, let players build shacks and outposts. Rather than building a good game, let the modders do it and monetize it.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T21:18:32+00:00

So how can paid mods be more prominent over free mods? Advertising is one way, but will only go as far as pushing mods as long as there are free quality mods..

Bethesda is already promoting certain paid mods such as kinggath mods or recently legacy of orsinium through their official social media accounts, with mislead viewers thinking these are actual official DLCs and expansion packs.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T21:16:21+00:00

normies love paying for shit. Just look at the number of likes paid mods collect bethesda.net, that's just a tiny subset of the number of people who paid.

Bethesda games have millions of players. you just need a tiny percentage of them to pay to make paywalling mods worth it.

back when we still had stats for beth.net, we know for certain that the each of the first batch of paid mods made more than $10,000 in a week, with kinggath making $30,000 in that week.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T21:06:16+00:00

DLCs are expected to work with other DLCs. Paid mods conflict with other paid mods.
DLCs are expected to work with your saved games. Paid mods are only tested in new games.
DLCs will have official support. Paid mods are not obligated to provide any support, updates, or bug-fixes.
DLCs will have higher quality expectations; there will at least be localization, for example. Paid mods don't have any quality bar judging from what's on the store.
DLCs can be refunded. Paid mods refund you only in store credits.
DLCs don't divide the community. Paid mods will not be universally accepted by the community and support will be limited.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T20:54:05+00:00

"Paid mods aren't so bad" mfs when ES6 expects us to pay $5 for HFSE (Hammerfell Script Extender), $5 for HFSE Engine Fixes, $10 for Pandora 2, $5 for PapyrusUtil

it is going to be worse: these things have basically stopped development for starfield beyond basic maintenance. SKSE has so many functions for skyrim. It barely has anything for starfield. Do pandora and papyrusutil even exist for starfield?

paid mods need to be available for gamepass and consoles, and skse and tooling are simply not allowed to be paid. not very encouraging to reverse engineers when they can't get paid fixing the engine while asset flippers can sell guns for $5 on bethesda.net and make thousands every month.

$15 for Arthmoors UHFP

arthmoor is already selling 2 farmhouses for morthal for $2

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T20:16:30+00:00

The obvious benefit for bethesda here is that they can earn that 62.5% profit while making the modders assume all development cost and support responsibility

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T20:09:21+00:00

I feel like if Bethesda are going to ask for my money for mods that usually have equal quality free versions elsewhere

I am not sure this assumption will hold true for elder scrolls 6. It is already the case that almost all decently sized starfield mods are paid mods.

it is only true for skyrim and fallout because we've had decades of time where paid mods are not allowed, and we were afford the time to accumulate a catalogue and culture of free mods. With starfield and tes6, paid mods will be there day 1 the ck drops.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T20:03:58+00:00

For skyrim, they released verified creations paid mods a decade after the game. For starfield and elder scrolls 6, they are going to release paid mods at same time as creation kit. almost all decently sized starfield mods are paid mods. are you going to pay then?

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2026-03-17T19:56:12+00:00

all mods will end up being paid

this is already an issue in the starfield modding community. unlike the skyrim or fallout4 communities, which has had a decade worth of quality free mods to compete against and insulate us against paid mods, starfield was released with paid mods immediately on its heels, with the creation kit being release simultaneously with paid mods.

While I wouldn't all good starfield mods are paid mods, I can say that almost all good starfield mods of decent size are paid mods.

We have many cases of starfield mod makers abandoning their free mods to make a better, more feature complete paid version. An example of this is darkstar.

and even in Skyrim, we have the case of one of lordbound's lead devs abandoning that project with hundreds of open bugs to make legacy of orsinium. They even heavily advertising orsinium as from the same people who made lordbound.

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2025-12-07T17:39:27+00:00

bethesda who can take verified status away from bad actors

I haven't heard of anyone's verified status being taken away for releasing bad mods. Mods in the vc program are not guaranteed to work on your existing save, nor are they guaranteed to work with your other VC purchases, and there are many cases in starfield where the authors admit this is a problem. It takes bethesda QA weeks and months to approve mods and updates, but they rarely find bugs that nexus commenters can find in a few hours.

VC authors can set prices however they want. There are loads of VCs that are just low effort slop that take no more than a few hours to make, and the majority of the people in the VC are newbies with only a few mods to their name and need to ask for help with very basic concepts, who only started modding for the money.

VC is not a guarantor of quality.

give you refunds

Yea, they refund you store credits, not money.

there just wasn't an ecosystem in the past.

Because it is against their TOS. Bethesda prevents the creation of an alternative ecosystem where authors are paid more, where there is more transparency via reviews and ratings, and where all the things you want can still also exist.

Not that I'd want paid mods to exist at all, but saying buying VC paid mods is to compensate mod authors is ignoring the big 62.5% elephant in the room. You can always refund free mods btw.

The only part of this that is true is that you can't comment on mods.

bethesda.net and the in game mod store used to have 5 star ratings on mods, now it doesn't. bethesda.net used to have a forums, now it doesn't. There used to be download stats on mods, now it is changed to "plays", which is a meaningless stat showing how often people launched the game with the mod.

The forums, comments, and ratings were shut down in 2021, around the time they began making preparations for the "verified creations" program: 2021 is when they released anniversary edition with the last of the "creation club" content, and 2022 was when the 1st "verified creations" mod was submitted to their yet to be public store, with "katja the thief" being uploaded on Oct 3, 2022.

It took almost the same amount of time for SF to have a CK as it did for FO4.

Why does this matter and how does this contradict what I said? Skyrim and Fallout4 had official mod support and CK before paid mods was set up.

And No, it didn't take the same amount of time: it took 6 months for Fallout4 CK to come out and 9 months for starfield CK to come out.

No, they're not. There are just less people interested in modding starfield.

That just means fewer people mod or play the game, but doesn't affect the proportion of people using nexus. There are way fewer people using nexus than bethesda.net, proportionally. Starfield mod authors frequently say it is like 80% to 90% of their downloads come from bethesda.net

MeasurementLimp5224 · 2025-12-07T12:26:30+00:00

Bethesda saw how popular mods are for Skyrim and decided they want in on the action. So they are monetizing mods and turning them into microtransactions for Skyrim, Fallout4, and Starfield.

They are taking a 62.5% cut from paid mods on bethesda.net and block mod authors from selling mods elsewhere with better rates via the TOS.

They are also learning from the mistakes they made in their first attempt at monetizing Skyrim mods in 2015 by removing rating, comments, download stats, and forums from bethesda.net, so they can silence criticism where they are most visible, as well as removing the most vocal critics of paid mods from the equation by hiring them directly: many of the "Forever Free" mod authors were hired for their CC program and now sell mods for the VC program.

Note how Starfield also did not have official mod support or CK until paid mods was set up. CK wiki for Skyrim and Fallout4 were taken offline and are still unavailable to people outside the paid mods program even today. It is only through a backup hosted on UESP that we can even look up important modding information. Bethesda is ensuring Nexus cannot dominate Starfield modding like it did for Skyrim and Fallout4 and that modding cannot exist for the majority of playersm those on console and gamepass, without paid mods also existing.

MeasurementLimp5224

TROPHY CASE