Though many years ago it might have been a laughable prospect, on the inside SkyrimBack in its heyday, Bethesda’s paid mods for Creations are now a popular option for many players. At least that’s the case Field of Starsand third-party modding site Nexus Mods is finally responding accordingly.
More precisely, The latest Nexus Mods rules update provides an adequate explanation of what the company thinks about paid mods approved by publishers/developers. Honestly, this sounds generally pretty harmless and reasonable, but there are a few tidbits that could cause problems in the future. The point of all this, as Nexus puts it, is that the company is “committed to building a positive modding community where all content is freely available.” Under the novel policy this means NO any interaction with paid mods.
Nexus Mods Issues Total Ban on ‘Demo’ Versions of Paid Mods and More
As highlighted by wr/starfieldmods and discussed above, there are three main points of contention that need to be discussed in the context of the latest Nexus rules update:
- Nexus Mods does not allow free mods to be shared if they are inferior versions of paid mods.
- Nexus Mods does not allow mod lists based on paid mods to the extent that the list does not function without the user paying for the content.
- Nexus Mods does not allow any patches or add-ons for paid user-generated content.
The first two updates are, overall, pretty reasonable. Using Nexus Mods as a demo site for paid content hosted exclusively on Creations is in penniless taste and diminishes the value of Nexus as a third-party provider of community-generated content. Likewise, providing mod lists that rely entirely on paid mods is a penniless solution because it directly increases revenue from Works.
Extrapolating from this, it seems similarly reasonable that the Nexus would also disallow patches and/or extensions for paid Bethesda Creations mods (or any other similar mod marketplace). You can definitely argue that these types of improvements can still be hosted on Creatives. However, this also opens the door to situations where a non-Creations modder will no longer be able to make an X Nexus mod compatible with a paid Y Creations mod using a Nexus-hosted XY patch.
Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how this works in practice, but it could drive an even bigger wedge between the two modding markets than is currently the case.
It’s also worth taking into account the fact that Bethesda decided to release some bullshit Field of Stars content via Works as paid offerings. Would Nexus now prohibit Nexus patches and add-ons for items from Bethesda works? Probably not, but everything is up in the air as things stand. Time will tell how this ultimately plays out, but it’s clear that Nexus isn’t joyful with the direction Bethesda is taking with Creations.
