Bethesda Reignites The Paid Mods Controversey With ‘Starfield’ Creation Kit

As the line from the Bill Murray movies goes, “It’s Groundhog Day… again.” Back in 2015, Valve launched its “Paid Creations” platform on the Steam client, through which those who made game mods could list them in a marketplace for a cost. This was done at least in coordination with, if not at the behest of, Bethesda. The backlash was both swift and severe, with a gaming community, that was used to mods made by hobbyist, suddenly had to contend with fees for these mods determined by the modder themselves. It got so bad that Valve nixed the platform shortly after.

But Bethesda never really gave up on the concept. Instead, it released the Creation Club modding in-game store in 2017, but insisted that platform would not incorporate paid-for mods. Then, in 2023, Creation Club was supplanted by the Verified Creations platform, which functioned similarly but brought back paid-for mods for titles like Skyrim. That game is nearly 15 years old and the paid mods program is still controversial for it.

And now Bethesda is kicking the controversy back into high gear, having just released the Creations program for Starfield.

A recent update heralding the release of the Starfield Creation Kit included a new mission that enables players to become bounty hunters for the Trackers Alliance faction, with the promise of future Trackers Alliance missions coming in subsequent updates. But the second Trackers Alliance mission, The Vulture, is only available as a paid add-on costing 700 Starfield Creation Credits—the equivalent of $7, which in reality is $10 because that’s the smallest amount of credits you can purchase to cover the cost.

The move was not well received. Unhappy players immediately recalled Bethesda’s disastrous attempt to launch paid mods for Skyrim in 2015, and of course the infamous Oblivion Horse Armor DLC from 2006. The mission also received unfavorable comparisons to the Starfield premium edition upgrade, which includes the full Shattered Space expansion, the Constellation skin pack, digital art book, soundtrack, and 1,000 Creation Credits for $35: “Is Shattered Space actually just two quests in a trenchcoat?” one redditor rhetorically asked. Steam user reviews, predictably, took a nosedive.

Okay, so there are really two things going on here, rather than one. There are still a lot of unhappy folks out there seething at the concept of paid-for mods generally, including from third party modders. It’s the same problem as with Skyrim and with Valve’s release before. The modding ecosystem with most games most of the time is one in which players do not expect to pay for mods, as those mods are typically produced by hobbyists and distributed for free. While I don’t hate the idea of modders getting something for their work inherently, it’s a massive shift in the ecosystem which isn’t going to be embraced readily.

And then there’s what Bethesda is charging itself for mission mods, which is what the above quote is referring to. The cost to value ratio players are doing in their heads is obviously not sitting well, and it’s not hard to understand why. $7 for essentially a single game mission and some in-game accessories isn’t a great look. The result of all this is fairly predictable as well.

That “feedback” continues to be reflected in Steam reviews, which are now down to “mostly negative” over the past 30 days thanks primarily to the paid mission—which some players find especially egregious given the sense that Starfield itself was a disappointment.

But while adjustments may be in order, Howard emphasized the importance of enabling content creators to monetize their work, which he said was a big part of ensuring the long-term health of the community—and for the most part, he said players dig it.

The mission in question certainly does have plenty of buyers, it seems, but there is also a ton of negative chatter in the community about it. And, while I have to admit that I bought and loved Starfield, and didn’t really agree with much of the criticism around it, the fact is that the game was considered disappointing by a large portion of the customer base. To suddenly have what feels like overpriced singular missions thrown into the mix only adds insult to injury for those folks.

And the really frustrating part is some of the comments by the Bethesda team, including from Executive Producer Todd Howard.

“We hear the feedback,” Howard responded when asked whether Bethesda will change how it releases content like The Vulture in the future. “We need to evaluate both pricing, what we put out for free, how we communicate what’s in something, and really hear from the community there.”

Frankly, this could have been copied and pasted as a response from any of the other responses to the backlash from the other times Bethesda has done this sort of thing, as we’ve noted in this post. Going all the way back to the infamous horse-armor running joke.

Bethesda may be hearing the feedback, but they seem to be ignoring it and making the same customer-angering decisions over and over again.

So it’s Groundhog Day… again.