Bethesda doesn't learn from mistakes

[Adul]

Remember the horse armor DLC? Or how they tried to monetize mods that one time? Do you remember the backlash? Bethesda sure doesn't.

Introducing: the Creation Club!

https://creationclub.bethesda.net/en

From the FAQ:

What is the Creation Club?

Creation Club is a collection of all-new content for both Fallout 4 and Skyrim. It features new items, abilities, and gameplay created by Bethesda Games Studios and outside development partners including the best community creators. Creation Club content is fully curated and compatible with the main game and official add-ons.

Also from the FAQ:

Is Creation Club paid mods?

No. Mods will remain a free and open system where anyone can create and share what they’d like. Also, we won’t allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club, it must all be original content. Most of the Creation Club content is created internally, some with external partners who have worked on our games, and some by external Creators. All the content is approved, curated, and taken through the full internal dev cycle; including localization, polishing, and testing. This also guarantees that all content works together. We’ve looked at many ways to do “paid mods”, and the problems outweigh the benefits. We’ve encountered many of those issues before. But, there’s a constant demand from our fans to add more official high quality content to our games, and while we are able to create a lot of it, we think many in our community have the talent to work directly with us and create some amazing new things.

Translation:

No. Okay, yes. But this time we curate and test them!

Our fans obviously want more official content for their favorite games, but we really can't be bothered, so this is what you get.

But hey, I guess some of the mods will be coming from Bethesda. I wonder if they will do anything more substantial than armored crabs.

[Raym]

...or a poorly made quest where you have to kill a thousand skeletons in a keep on a previously non-existing island.

Honestly: they release games so full of bugs and so lacking in polish (and, lately, content) that I fail to see HOW the "Bethesda seal of approval" should make me feel confident that it will be better than a free mod. Top modders surely seem to care more about their creations than Beth.

[Adul]

Hey, I like Frostmoth. I'll admit it, it's not very good, but I like to have a bit of hack-and-slash fun in a game that's otherwise not very hack-and-slashy. My only real problem with it is the balance: all the skeletons are very easy to kill even on lower levels, while the boss at the end is more geared towards ultra-high level god characters. It's one of the worst spikes in difficulty I've ever seen in a video game.

But I get what you're saying. I've been trying to look at the various mods that will be available through this website, but I couldn't find any details about them. The only information I've seen about the mods are the little images on the top of the website, and those don't exactly make me excited for all the great new content we'll be able to purchase. In fact, most of the images suggest basic retextures or slight modifications to existing items, and/or rehashed content from previous games. Meh.


Edit: I've just noticed their YouTube trailer currently has 3,020 likes and 55,651 dislikes. It looks like Bethesda has earned themselves even more fan backlash to damage their brand further. I don't know why they insist on doing all these shady and/or unmarketable ideas. I think they're too greedy to realize that things like this will only hurt them in the long run.

[Raym]

Teheheh, honestly Firemoth (Frostmoth was in Bloodmoon ) wasn't THAT bad... but it's a blatant example of how Beth seems to slap things together and release them with little or no testing.
Really, as a company they've earned a bad reputation for the tendency to "let's release another bug-riddled, half-finished game, modders will fix it"

I don't know how other game developers fare these days, but I think the idea of releasing a game bit by bit, making you pay for DLCs with content that should have been released from the beginning can only be pushed so far: people don't like the feeling of being conned, and at least in the gaming circles I frequent it looks like gamers are getting really fed up with this kind of BS.

[Adul]

Oh right, it was Firemoth! I'm losing my Morrowind cred here.

Yeah, it's getting real bad. And honestly, Beth is still a saint compared to Bioware, who have been doing really shady things like day one DLC for years, probably due to the influence of EA. I remember the cut out content in Dragon Age being incredibly distracting, and they did the same sort of anti-consumer shenanigans with Mass Effect 2 & 3. It's shameful.

[fable2]

Bethesda sees what they consider a gold mine in creative content from people who have modded their games. I suspect the fact that is isn't their gold, and that the people who own the gold are simply giving it away, really seems like a tremendous waste to them. If they were smart, they'd bring on board the best modders with a decent salary, and set them to work doing whatever they want. But they don't want to shell cash out--they just want to own everything in that gold mine. Hence, that wonderful PR release blowing so much smoke out of their collective asses.

They seem to forget how badly that they've pulled their naked greed act before, and it blew up magnificently in their face. Will be fun watching it all happen again. More high quality entertainment, courtesy of Bethesda.

[Adul]

The sad part is they don't realize they've already exploited and profited from that gold mine. Had their games not have the modding capabilities and the amazing communities that sprung up to support them, Bethesda games wouldn't have the massive success they're having on PC. The answer to the question "How can we profit from modding?" is "You already are."

[Jac]

The sad part is they don't realize they've already exploited and profited from that gold mine. Had their games not have the modding capabilities and the amazing communities that sprung up to support them, Bethesda games wouldn't have the massive success they're having on PC. The answer to the question "How can we profit from modding?" is "You already are."

[Raym]

The sad part is they don't realize they've already exploited and profited from that gold mine. Had their games not have the modding capabilities and the amazing communities that sprung up to support them, Bethesda games wouldn't have the massive success they're having on PC. The answer to the question "How can we profit from modding?" is "You already are."

Ditto.
They are de facto capitalizing on the talent of modders to turn mediocre, often botched games into little gems.

[fable2]

The sad part is they don't realize they've already exploited and profited from that gold mine. Had their games not have the modding capabilities and the amazing communities that sprung up to support them, Bethesda games wouldn't have the massive success they're having on PC. The answer to the question "How can we profit from modding?" is "You already are."

This. They don't seem to realize it's the modders who have kept their games evergreen--so much to change! Many new quests, ndw shops, new items, houses, characters! They seem bound and determined, instead, to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, by driving away those very same modders. Not that it will matter much to those older games, but in terms of the newer ones, you can only show your rampant greed so often before modders get suspicious, then turned off. Assholes.

Contrast this to the creative team of old. When I visited Bethsoft the third time, for ES4, their team leaders acknowledged the value of modders and said they were going to make the tools that much easier to use. Of course, the creative team in the field and management have historically seldom made a good match in most game developers, unless they were the same folks.

What I wouldn't give for a good, visually modern ES3 that can run all the old mods, yet takes advantage of the ever so much more memory on modern CPUs. Might even lure back some of the old modders to do some more work. Ah, well. I can dream.