TL;DR: Execs finally think they can get away with it (again) and so paid mods are back on the menu.

Fundamentally this is a studio developing games with deliberately missing pieces, missing QoL features, and endemic bugs. And then they're taking money for people adding those pieces, adding those features, fixing those bugs.

I'm guessing things like the unofficial patch or other bug fixes won't be sold, and they'll stick to nice things like new armor and niche mechanics. But even then it feels like mods are a less obvious selling point for Bethesda games the more they monetize the scene.

Ugh.

I was thinking of reinstalling skyrim, a game I've paid for multiple times, but I won't now. This will almost certainly break some of the mods I usually use. I mean, fucking hell. The game's over 10 years old now. Plenty of people have bought it more than once.

And yes, I know that you can prevent updates, but I've had the thing update anyway even when I disabled that. Forget about verifying file integrity.

Can't we just enjoy the game we paid for, without Bethesda trying to fuck us over again?

Imagine if you bought a car, and the car company came over to your house without your permission, and started fiddling with rims so that the tyres you bought no longer fit.

I just want them to stop trying to break my mod setup.

I'll never pay for mods unless they are as big as the base game. My issue is simply money vs amount of mods. I use so many of them and I'm not going to pay 90€ for the game and 5€ each for 1000 mods. (RimWorld I have even more than that. Skyrim about 700). You'd need to be insane to believe that paying this much is healthy. Of course someone who uses 3 mods will argue paying 20€ per month each, is fair.

I just don't trust that a mod I payed money for would remain playable indefinitely.

I have no problem paying for good mods but I've not allowed Skyrim to update because I'd have to go through hundreds of mods to figure out which ones the update broke and I'm just unwilling to do that .

With the new restrictions that mods can't retroactively become paid mods, nor can they be dependent on others sounds fine on paper.

But consider what having this kind of system in place will do for future games and mods. I believe this will discourage collaboration and ultimately will cause a decline in quality. If paid mods can't build off of others, then there would be less incentive or option to build integration of mods. Anyone remember mods like cobl, cm partners, and fcom for Oblivion? Those would be impossible with paid mods. And since most modders would (rightfully so) like to maximize their income, I reckon many would exclusively make their portfolio be paid mods, even with restrictions on what they can build.

Great, I wonder who gets paid for all the mods that provide functionality for other mods.

Products aren't services.

Only legislation will fix this.

I don’t see the issue with providing modders with an avenue to charge for their work. If you don’t like it, don’t pay for them and continue doing what you’ve done.

I understand the resistance to paid mods in more mainstream games, but in the simulation community paid mods are an accepted thing, and good paid mods are almost universally thought to be worth the price of admittance. The effort involved in making a high-fidelity recreation of a specific racecar or aircraft takes a lot of time and resources, and the people who go through the effort of doing so deserve to have their time and costs offset. Hell, I have only made a few free mods, and I've made a few hundred in tips off them all the same.

Bethesda is a company so naturally they're going to want to try and profit off of mods. But outside of the compatibility hiccups this doesn't really sound that bad. It's a nice way for modders to get paid for their work, it's optional and it'll hopefully make modding more accessible in general. The bigger concerns (to me) would be how badly are Bethesda ripping off modders, and whether it would fracture any communities, for instance if it was too difficult to make an 'official' mod as well as a traditional one, leading to modders abandoning one or the other. So long as Bethesda handle it well it could be fine.