Skyrim: a beautiful scene showing tress during dusk.
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Skyrim brings back paid mods, and it’s going down as well as you’d expect

Mods "vetted" by Bethesda will be entitled to royalties.

Skyrim mods have always been a vital aspect in keeping the aging Elder Scrolls game alive and well. While the vast majority of them are free to downloadꦉ and🃏 install, Bethesda is once again interested in keeping some of the higher quality ones back for profit.

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A recent update for Skyrim was sent out and with it, , a new way for “players to discover, download and play community-made content.” In a nutshell, it means modders specially picked by the developer can earn a bit of money for their mods. That’s right, you’ll have to pay for these if you want to play them.

An explains those that have been vetted – referred to as “Verified Creators” – can set a price for mods “from a set selection of options.” They will then receive royalties from their content. While anyone can apply to be entered into the “Verified Creator Program,” it seems it’s reserved mainly for those with experience and expertise, possibly bordering on professional levels.

As you can imagine, it isn’t going down well with the Skyrim community at all. show many are angry about this new “evolution,” as Bethesda is calling it. Not only does it reintroduce paid community content, but some have said the update has broken some mods.

Something similar was attempted back in 2015, when Bethesda teamed up with Valve to implement a way of getting players to pay for custom mods. That didn’t go down well then, either, so it’s interesting that it’s being tried again.

Whether this is something that’s being attempted to see if it’ll work with Starfield is just speculation on my part. It should be noted that modders can choose to upload content to Skyrim for free. But in any case, the Elder Scrolls and Fallout studioꦜ is once again making itself unpopular among the co🅠mmunity.


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Andrew Heaton
Andrew has been a gamer since the 17th century Restoration period. He now writes for a number of online publications, contributing news and other articles. He does not own a powdered wig.