Bethesda wanted in on the bad rep since companies like EA, DICE, Activision, and the other big kids were hogging up headlines. Well, Bethesda made it in the news for blocking a very anticipated mod for Skyrim named Skyrim Together on Steam, which offers online capabilities.
Instead of Bethesda hiring a “search and talent” team to seek out modders with innovative ideas, they instead made the Creation Club and are shooting out rehashed stuff so people on PS4 and some folks on Xbox One can buy up, which is no more than a proxy of microtransactions.
Well, as it stands now a lot of companies are in a rush to make headlines for all the wrong reasons and that includes Bethesda. According to publication site ibtimes.com we learn that Bethesda couldn’t just sit there letting Steam be a direct competitor and allowing people to ignore the Creation Club, so they had to block Skyrim Together from being on Steam — like all the other stuff made by modders on Steam — to make headlines again:
“Some news guys, we have been in discussions with Bethesda and while they are fine with us releasing the mod they weren’t with us publishing the mod on Steam and we relied heavily on the Steam APIs for party and lobby systems.”
The above blockquote comes from Skyrim Together modder GRASS tastes bad. However, on another Reddit forum we learn from a person named Dangioy that Bethesda did not give a rhyme or reason as to why they blocked the Skyrim Together mod set to hit Steam:
“We contacted Bethesda regarding releasing the mod via the Steam store as a mod of ‘Skyrim.’ We aren’t allowed to release the mod as a game obviously. So we had to seek permission from Bethesda to do this. We got a response from Bethesda that this was unable to be done, we were not supplied a reason however. This won’t stop development, we’re currently working on an alternative system.”
This is an opposite approach that Bethesda is taking to other popular multiplayer mods that have been featured on Steam, such as DayZ (which started as a free mod for Arma 2), and JC2-MP mod, which is available through Steam as a free add-on for Just Cause 2.
As noted above, Bethesda doesn’t have to say why they blocked the mod and if they do it’ll be a dance around excuse to hint at “We don’t want our mods and stuff on Steam, which will lessen the appeal of our substitute microtransactions known as the Creation Club.”
Looking over to a modder who has worked for free on NexusMods and on the Creation Club, OfficeBum, even knows that the CC is made to net Bethesda and ZeniMax several bank rolls and then some:
“As a modder myself and having worked with other modders on multiple occasions, most people do modding as either a hobby, or a way to build their portfolio for dev companies. Nobody expects to make bank off of modding. You can’t live off modding and shouldn’t expect to. CC really isn’t changing much, we still can’t live off a one time payment that pays the month’s rent at most. At the end of the day, CC is really Bethesda seeing money to be made off mods and making bank, it’s honestly helping them much more then us (especially in the long run). Modding is better off staying donation only, and passion projects. That’s when they’re at their best. When it becomes about money, everything falls apart.”
Don’t be shocked if Bethesda comes out with a similar mod that mirrors Skyrim Together, but inferior via the Creation Club so that they can harp on those who aren’t on PC, which sorta includes Xbox One.
