Following the recent Skyrim update that re-enabled paid mods through the new unified Creations platform, I had a brief chat with Skyblivion lead developer Rebelzize.
The introduction of Creations caused a bit of a split within the still-vibrant Skyrim modding community. Whereas most modders have sworn they would never join the Verified Creator Program to release paid mods, others like Elianora (who has released a lot of free mods for all Bethesda games, as you can see on Nexus) went in the opposite direction. She has already released Shadetree Lodge, a detailed and cozy player home near the water.
Speaking to VG247, Elianora commented that some fellow mod creators and mod users have remained behind the times, failing to catch up to the fact that content creators are now regularly being compensated for their work.
When Oblivion and Morrowind modding started (and earlier Fallouts), we didn’t have PayPal or Patreon, and Ko-Fi wasn’t a thing. I believe people got used to everything being free, and people made content because they wanted to make it, and when new ways for content creators to get compensated for their work have popped up, the Bethesda modding hivemind didn’t quite catch up.
Being able to work on things I love with some of the most phenomenal devs in the industry and getting paid to do it is just too good an opportunity to pass up. Creations can be a massive opportunity for a lot of the community’s best creators to get to earning a stable keep instead of the occasional donation from a grateful fan and to get their foot through the door towards Bethesda and the game industry.
I asked Skyblivion lead Rebelzize (whom I previously interviewed on the impact that NVIDIA’s RTX Remix platform could have on modding) his take on Bethesda’s Creations and Elianora’s decision to support the new platform. Here’s what he told me:
I put myself behind Elianora on this matter. Although I’ve personally never paid for a mod directly and probably never will because I’m a cheapskate, I do support the option for people to monetize their work.
We have already seen this in the form of Ko-Fi, Patreon, and good old PayPal donations, all of which I have used or am currently using to support mod authors that create mods that I use or have used a lot. I don’t mind supporting mod authors at all, but most likely, I will pass on paid mods unless something crazy is created that I think will absolutely be worth the value. At the end of the day, it is the right of the modder to make their work paid, just as much as it’s the user’s right not to buy it.
That’s not to say the Skyblivion total conversion mod project (currently slated to launch in 2025) will become paid. The same goes with similar projects like Beyond Skyrim, which will remain free as well, the creators told me. These multi-year mod projects have long promised they would be free, and it would be a betrayal of the community’s trust to change that at this point.
On the other hand, I agree with Rebelzize that modders like Elianora should have the freedom to make their new work paid. The fact that mods used to be free is mostly owed to the previous lack of platforms that could be used to monetize their work.
That’s all changed now, and content creators are completely free to decide whether access to their work should require compensation, just as the users will be able to choose whether to acquire them or not. After all, Roblox and more recently Fortnite have clearly paved the way forward for user-generated content.
