Starfield Update Hints at Important New Feature

gamerant.com:

Some newly surfaced evidence suggests Starfield's Creation Kit 2 could be entering beta soon. But the upcoming test may only be reserved for Starfield modders participating in Bethesda's Verified Creator Program.

All of the developer's open-world RPGs since the early 2000s have eventually developed bustling modding communities. Starfield has been no exception to that trend, with just its Nexus Mods page featuring over 6,600 projects as of late February, some six months following the game's release. But its current selection of mods is primarily a testament to the modding community's perseverance, as Starfield still doesn't offer official modding support.

The release of the game's Creation Kit 2 may finally be drawing near, according to some recent developer activity pulled from the Starfield Steam repo. A February 22 update, first spotted by Reddit user TERAB1T, saw Bethesda add a new codebase branch called «ct_beta_verifiedcreator.» The first part of the designation possibly stands for «creation» or «creator tools,» while the subsequent keywords suggests that the beta branch will be reserved for those participating in Bethesda's Verified Creator Program meant to help modders make money.

The last time the studio created a new Starfield code depot with «beta» in its name was on November 6. Two days later, the Maryland-based developer released update 1.8.83 for Steam users on the beta channel. Although the name of the newly surfaced branch indicates that the studio may be prioritizing rolling out the game's official modding tools to its verified modders, that doesn't necessarily mean people interested in creating free mods will have to wait for much longer. Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard did promise that Starfield's mod tools would arrive in 2024, without making a distinction between supporting the Verified Creators Program and the wider community.

Past Starfield patches have each spent around two weeks in beta before hitting the stable channel. But the game's