Safe to say this isn’t the most popular update.
Bethesda has released a big new update for Skyrim Special Edition that has managed the impressive feat of annoying players for two entirely separate reasons. Some are irritated by what they see as a renewed focus on paid mods for Skyrim, while others are chapped that the update has apparently broken a large number of existing mods.
Bethesda launched the original paid mods program for Skyrim way back in 2015, and to say it didn’t go well is like saying the Hindenburg had some safety issues: The uproar was so immediate and fierce that the entire program was scrapped within a week. It was resurrected, sort of, in 2017 with the launch of the Creation Club, which Bethesda said was not a paid mods system even though mods in the program were only accessible with « credits » that had to be purchased with « real money. »
As we noted at the time it was all a bit confusing, but what it ultimately came down to is that some mods would be free and others—those on the Creation Club—would cost money.
The update released today is essentially a refinement of that program that pulls together existing mods and Creation Club items, along with new Creations as they’re now known, under a new Creations menu in Skyrim Special Edition. Bethesda has also launched a new Verified Creator Program, « the evolution of Creation Club, » which enables approved members to sell their content—which is of course where the upset begins.
To be clear, not all Creations are paid: « While everyone can upload free Creations, only admitted members of the Verified Creator Program may get content approved for sale and earn royalties on each Creation of theirs sold, » the Creations FAQ states.
Still, there is considerable unhappiness about the development, as some fans see the change as a shift toward the system Bethesda tried to roll out in 2015. A few commenters in this r/pcgaming thread argue that the « paid mods are back » angle is inaccurate because they’ve been around since the launch of Creation Club in 2017, but quite a few others say there’s enough of a distinction to justify the anger.
« Creation Club content went through a Bethesda dev pipeline and was often developed by Bethesda themselves (and was also criticized on release and has been criticized every time a CC update broke the game), » redditor wertwert55 wrote. « This is opening the door for mod authors to just outright charge for mods after getting verified by Bethesda. Saying ‘paid mods are back’ in the sense that mass monetization of mods is again possible is completely accurate. »
The pushback at this point isn’t nearly as ferocious as it was in 2015. For one thing, Skyrim is a lot older than it was back then, and Bethesda is also easing into it much more gently. The announcement of the Creation Club in 2017 was contentious but the overall reaction was less negative because it was a genuinely improved program, and the amount of paid content for Skyrim was very limited: Only 74 Creation Club items were ever released, amidst a much greater flow of free mods. While this new program opens the door to more, Bethesda will presumably keep things on a leash—although how tightly it will hold that leash remains to be seen.
More interesting, I think, is what happens in 2024 when Bethesda rolls out official mod tools for Starfield, which I expect will see a similar style of integration to the Creations program. Deep modding support could go a long way toward giving Starfield the depth it currently lacks, but there’s also a real risk of blowback from fans if Bethesda leans too hard into charging for them.
The more immediate issue with today’s update, though—and one that seems to have generated considerably more anger—is that it seems to have broken existing mods dependent on the Skyrim Script Extender. SKSE, as it’s known, is a mod that expands Skyrim’s scripting capabilities to enable other mods to do things far beyond standard Skyrim functionality. It’s powerful and flexible, and a lot of major Skyrim mods rely on it to run—and the downside of that reliance is that when SKSE stops working, so does everything else.
The impact of today’s Skyrim update can be seen in numerous Steam discussion threads, which is replete with titles like « Is there a way to roll back the update, » « Shi-tty update 05/12/2023, » « Bethesda, who asked? » and my favorite of the bunch, « Bethesda please stop updating Skyrim :(. » There’s also lots of advice kicking around about how to avoid installing the update, recommendations to re-buy the game on GOG (which does not include the Creation Club option), and for those bold enough to roll the dice, the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Downgrade Patcher on Nexus Mods.
