Bethesda Reveals Paid Mod Marketplace 2.0: Creation Club

Ages and ages ago, Valve and Bethesda teamed up to try a bold new experiment: a paid mod marketplace. The concept was ambitious, noble, but terribly haphazard: content creators could upload their mods, slap a fee on them, and ask people to actually reward their hard work and effort before downloading and enjoying it. Most people enjoyed the idea... but the execution was impossibly stained by Valve's "do nothing, let the community monitor itself" attitude, and thus, the marketplace was soon swelling: not just with bad mods, but with mods stolen from creators who had no intention of selling them in the first place.

It was a mess. It was a controversy. So it was inevitably taken down.

But at this year's E3, Bethesda, the black horse of the presenters, had a surprise announcement tucked away with all the new VR re-releases they showed off, an announcement that in many ways, is far, far bigger than any game they could have unveiled: a new Creation Club for Skyrim and Fallout 4.



It's pretty simple: people within Bethesda, some developers outside of Bethesda, and a host of well-known community creators (with the potential for more people joining in the future) will be able to submit mods for both Fallout 4 and Skyrim to the Creation Club. They'll be paid for their work, and the mods will be sold in-game using credits, which can then be easily downloaded and added to your game. Each mod will be tested, localized, and go through QA, so unlike most mods, which always are at risk of slowing you down or bugging your game, these should all run smooth and perfect.

While reaction to the news has been bitter (parallels are being drawn to the failed mod marketplace, of course), I think those complaints are very short-sighted. What made the mod marketplace fail was that anyone could submit, and there was no regulation of content. The paid part wasn't the problem: just the people abusing it. This new system fixes those issues by making it regulated, and making the creators (who are mostly professionals) work alongside Bethesda to make sure everything is on the level.

Frankly, I find it very exciting. They're not replacing mods, just offering to sell premium ones. That's nothing but good news... and, possibly, the only way Bethesda can hope to get mods on the Switch version of Skyrim. I cannot imagine Nintendo would ever allow mods any other way.

The Creation Club goes live this summer. I'm sure we'll be hearing lots more about it in the days to come...