Bethesda tries its hand at paid mods in Skyrim Special Edition once again

eurogamer.net:

Bethesda has released a new and quite chunky update for Skyrim Special Edition, which in itself isn't all that remarkable. Sure the game is several years old now, but it is still very popular with players, so why not give the game a boost if it needs it.

However, this particular update has gone down rather badly with Skyrimmers, as it has reintroduced a paid mod platform into the game.

To get you up to speed as to why this has been controversial, all the way back in 2015, Bethesda partnered with Valve to bring paid mods to Skyrim via Steam. However, it was incredibly unpopular with both players and mod makers, and the publisher removed the option to sell Skyrim mods on Valve's platform shortly after this idea made its debut.

Then, in 2017, Bethesda launched Creation Club, which similarly offered add-ons for the same. This was available for Fallout 4 and, once again, its Skyrim Special Edition. The difference was that the club was an invite-only situation for modders, and there were some tight guidelines those invited had to follow. They couldn't mess with Skyrim lore, for example. Several Creation Club items were also created by Bethesda themselves, making it a middleground of sorts between paid mods and paid DLC.

Fast forward to today and Bethesda has essentially released an evolution of its Creation Club for Skyrim Special Edition as part of its latest update. This update adds Bethesda Game Studios Creations to the game, which the company describes as «an enhanced platform for building and sharing community-made content».

At its most basic level, Bethesda has merged its Creation Club and Mods tab in the Skyrim Special Edition menu. Creators can upload free mods as before, but also, the doors are open for anyone to