Bethesda was under no obligation to talk to these mod devs beforehand. But it sure makes them look bad. As a recent comparable, Concerned Ape was open and communicative with all the mod devs before releasing his latest patch for Stardew Valley, a game that is just about as old as Fallout 4.
Bethesda has become a literal laughingstock at this point in time and it’s just funny to point at them every time they rack up another L.
Bethesda communicated beforehand for script extender Skyrim. Gave them an NDAA and allowed them to update the extender before the anniversary update release.
Don’t know why they didn’t do the same for Fallout
Stardew is such a good example given the community is similarly mod-centric
I recently had to find out that a mod author of a couple mods I was happily using on my PS5 copy of Skyrim removed their mods entirely because of another batch of greedy monetisation efforts from Bethesda, trying to monetise mods even further. Just fuck those guys man
Fallout London is whinging but the real loser is the Fallout 4 Script Extender mod, upon which so many other mods relied.
Fallout London release or no, this has broken a massive number of mods for Fallout 4 that relied on the Script Extender.
That’s actually the bigger story here, that Bethesda declined to communicate with the modders who made the backbone of a lot of other mods.
From the Fallout 4 Script Extender home page:
The 2024-04-25 Fallout 4 update (1.10.980 and later) has broken F4SE and the rest of the native code modding scene similarly to Skyrim’s “Anniversary Edition” patch. I am working on an update and cannot currently offer a timeline for its availability, nor whether there will be any critical technical issues that would block an update. Do not email with questions.
I made a tutorial on reverting to 1.5.97 Skyrim SE like a month ago because it breaks again with every new update, and they STILL update it pretty frequently.
Nobody liked that.
Every single time this happens, people act like its the first time. Game updates -> Script Extender breaks -> Mods reliant on it break too. Every. Single. Time.
but this is a game that basically lives and dies by its mods, and this is an update that (arguably) changed nothing anyone who is still playing the game cares about after years of stability. why fix what isn’t broken?
For a company that relies 100% on modders for their games, you’d think they’d have an actual modding API built into their games by now.
Imagine if Bethesda actually really listened to and catered to their modding community instead of just trying to monetize them. They would be legend right now.
if bethesda relied 100% on modders then fo3 and new vegas and morrowind and oblivion and skyrim would have completely failed on console. did they?
I’ll have to watch the BBC interview. The way the article is worded makes it sounds like they’ve been in communication with Bethesda while creating Fallout London.
There’s actually a comment to the effect that they had zero communication with Bethesda, but still wish they had been given earlier notice.
That’s the kicker lol. They didn’t communicate with Bethesda but expect Bethesda to communicate with them.
Yeah but what expectation could they have had that they’d need to communicate with Bethesda in the first place? The game’s been “complete” for several years at this point, and IIRC Skyrim Special Edition (the Skyrim version of what happened here) was both announced in advance and released as a separate game, so mods that weren’t getting updates could still function. In light of that, it seems reasonable for the developer to expect advance warning at least in the form of a press release prior to the update being made available. Should they have reached out every week asking whether Bethesda had any plans to update a 10-year-old game?
In light of that, it seems reasonable for the developer to expect advance warning at least in the form of a press release prior to the update being made available.
The modder said it themselves. It will take time for them to check the 4 years of work to see if it still function. At this point, no matter when Bethesda drop the update, they will complaint that it break their mod. This has been going on since the launch of FO4 where every time bethesda update the game, it break the mod, people complain about it, some straight out announce they won’t fix it until the final update. It’s nothing new.
IMO that was super sudden.
Usually these things come with a lot of wind up, and I say this as a consumer.
Even without the context of this mod drama, I did a double take when I heard about the new stuff because its release date was so soon from the announcement
It wouldn’t be the first time, the SKSE team for Skyrim was in contact with Bethesda before Special Edition came out.
It was surreal watching BBC report on a game mod. I saw the thumbnail ‘Fallout London Delay’ with the BBC logo and thought there was a terrorist attack or something.
Fallout’s been full of Americana. The Euros haven’t had their shot at running around in places they know.
Why do they need to release for the newest version? If they were going to release soon anyways, just release for the old version of Fallout.
I’m picturing the number of messages they’d receive the day the update hit. People suck. Most will understand that they need to hold off on updating if they want to play the mod, some will seek support when it breaks. Some of those will say “that makes sense” and disappointedly wait for the mod to update, some of those will get angry. I certainly wouldn’t want an inevitable flood of angry emails a few days after the big release.
Yeah it doesn’t help that the Steam version would likely try to auto-update and I don’t believe there is an easy way to downgrade.
I could be wrong about that latter point. There might be an option in the properties menu similar to how you can opt into betas.
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I’m disappointed in myself for buying FO4 recently.
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Can’t help but feel for the developers here. I get that Bethesda has no responsibility to keep 3rd party Devs updated, but surely someone on the team would have noticed the potential for community engagement and worked with those putting the time and effort into the IP.
BGS: because fuck you, that’s why.
It sucks that this was the outcome as it’s going to require a ton of work from the modders, but to expect that a major publisher would involve the unofficial modding community in the release of official patches feels insane, even if they do have a sizable following.
In fact, I prefer it this way. I want the publisher to keep their fingers out of what the modders do as much as possible. Things are their best when the publisher is ignorant of their work. Less chance that the Eye of Sauron that is their legal department starts checking over mods for potential copyright lawsuits
Have they never had to deal with a Bethesda patch before!?
Never heard of this project. I mean sounds like a cool mod, but why is this news, and why does a mod need to care about a release date? They’re not selling a product, they can release whenever lol.
Do you think under a communist gift economy, release dates for media wouldn’t matter?
I get this project is a big deal for some folks but having a hard time accepting the argument that I shouldn’t get a better visual/overall game experience because of a mod I’ll never play and their apparent lack of communication with Bethesda. They just expected to be that high of priority? Am I reading this wrong?
Edit: reading through comments I’m a little more sympathetic to modders writ large than I am this team specifically but I get the frustration. Bethesda could’ve done everyone a solid and given a little heads up. Still, it sounds like this project has been massive in scope and basically any changes were going to cause them issues so that’s worth considering here too.
One route might be to push out a new release for a month or something on a beta branch so that modders can see what breaks and provide some time to fix it prior to it being pushed out to everyone.
Take longer to get updates out, but reduce windows where mods are broken.
No, this is a bad idea because it makes too much sense.
It would’ve shaved one month off their currently undetermined new release date it sounds like.
They’re saying this will take more than 2 months. They’re upset because it effectively undoes a lot of their work, which sucks, but that was always going to be the case unless bethesda went out of their way like a year ago to tell them what was coming. And remember, these guys aren’t even in the creator club or in any way communicating with Bethesda. I just think it’s a little unreasonable to be so independent while expecting Bethesda to anticipate their very specific needs.
I wish Bethesda did and maybe I’m being too generous but idk. Just not really sure I am 100% sympathetic to their plight here.
Or they could just keep the legacy endpoints intact while still adding new features.
So, I’m not saying that I agree with them slagging on Bethesda here. Hell, they haven’t even released their mod yet. Doesn’t break things for their players.
But there is legitimately an issue where Bethesda pushes out an update and mods break. They have talked to a few of the very core mod creators early before to help alleviate breakage, but it can still leave mod-using players with a broken environment for some time.
Obviously, Bethesda’s primary responsibility is to people playing vanilla, the stuff that they release.
But there are a lot of modders and people playing with mods, especially a decade after release.
Some of it is just a hard technical problem. There’s gonna be some degree or breakage at updates.
But I think that it’s also true that there are a few things that Bethesda could do to help alleviate the breakage beyond what they have.
Plus, you know, even aside from mods, doing a beta branch does have some benefits. Lets Bethesda find out about some bugs before they push an update to everyone. They won’t catch everything with internal testing.
Like I said in my edit, I’m not entirely defending Bethesda here. I’m just trying to look at this case specifically and not let their entire history color it, as difficult as that may be. FOLON is somewhat turning this into a blame game, where I don’t think anyone’s really at fault except arguably Bethesda in that specific case.
Even with all of that in mind, Bethesda should have been in better communication with modders. There’s no doubt here. They are critical part of the overall success and staying power of their games.
From a business/PR standpoint, Bethesda missed a great opportunity to regain some rapport with the community post-Starfield
Considering mods, whether you like it or not, are a massive reasons for these games’ lasting appeal, yeah I’d consider it a big deal. You may not use mods, and hey good for you, but the billions of downloads from Nexus mods solely for these games in particular shows that many others do.
Regardless, ignoring all of that, the Skyrim Script Extender Team was in contact with Bethesda before Special Edition released, giving them time to work on an SE version for when the day came. So it was perfectly reasonable for the Fallout Script Extender Team to expect the same.
I agree FSET got done dirty
accepting the argument that I shouldn’t get a better visual/overall game experience because of a mod I’ll never play
I’d be surprised if they’d do something substantial. They only do that to keep paid DLCs and mods afloat.
“The new book has, for lack of a better term, completely screwed over my fanfiction”
“These books live and die by their fanfiction. For the authors not to coordinate with the fanfic writers is a disgrace”
