There was initial paid mod attempt that they walked back due to player outcry, not because the paid mods themselves caused any problems. Which doesn’t really work as an example of “paid mods are almost never a good thing for the game itself”.
The Creation Club has been around for years, so technically speaking “paid mods” have been around in Skyrim for a while. Which maybe suggests that paid mods aren’t going to cause problems if they’ve been in place for this long?
If you want examples of games where the situation with mods is much worse than it is for Skyrim, you could look at literally any other game that exists. For one indication of that, if you look at the front page of nexusmods.com right now it appears to list the games it covers in order of mod files downloaded. Skyrim is #1 (SE) and #2 (LE) on the list. The next three are other Bethesda games. Skyrim Special Edition is ahead of the first non-Bethesda game on the list by an order of magnitude. You will not find a game anywhere else offering anything like the quantity, quality, and diversity of mods that Skyrim has, and this is a large part of the reason it ranks among the best-selling games of all time.
They’re mad to try and mess with the model that has proven itself more successful than anything else for more than a decade.
Are there other examples of games having paid mods that you can point to for the issues you are concerned about?
I can’t think of any off the top of my head, mainly because so few games provide any supported tools for mods in the first place.
Edit: People are downvoting for asking a question? I honestly want to know if there are previous examples.
This is the second time Bethesda has done this.
Kinda true in two ways.
There was initial paid mod attempt that they walked back due to player outcry, not because the paid mods themselves caused any problems. Which doesn’t really work as an example of “paid mods are almost never a good thing for the game itself”.
The Creation Club has been around for years, so technically speaking “paid mods” have been around in Skyrim for a while. Which maybe suggests that paid mods aren’t going to cause problems if they’ve been in place for this long?
If you want examples of games where the situation with mods is much worse than it is for Skyrim, you could look at literally any other game that exists. For one indication of that, if you look at the front page of nexusmods.com right now it appears to list the games it covers in order of mod files downloaded. Skyrim is #1 (SE) and #2 (LE) on the list. The next three are other Bethesda games. Skyrim Special Edition is ahead of the first non-Bethesda game on the list by an order of magnitude. You will not find a game anywhere else offering anything like the quantity, quality, and diversity of mods that Skyrim has, and this is a large part of the reason it ranks among the best-selling games of all time.
They’re mad to try and mess with the model that has proven itself more successful than anything else for more than a decade.
I would argue that had much more to do with the fact that Bethesda is one of the very few companies who provide a decent SDK alongside their games.