True, but Bethesda not only embraced modders with open arms—they encouraged them! You can’t say the same for most other game devs; the majority either ignore modders like they're pests or, worse, are outright hostile towards them.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago

Well except for that part where the native mod tools suck ass and every creation club update breaks a bunch of mods

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago

Their "open arms" has felt like a vampiric embrace for almost a decade now, because they would really, really, really prefer if modders released stuff via their club, where modders can get money and they also get a slice for free.

The bigger PC names of the 90s and early 2000s were all welcoming to modding, with some games shipping with the "official editor tools" for anyone to mess around with (UT99 and Warcraft 3 come to mind)

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

this doesnt make any sense at all. they made the game

[–] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

But it holds up thanks to the mods that are available for it now. Mods which are all developed by not-Bethesda. Vanilla Skyrim doesn't hold up in 2024, modded Skyrim does.

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

really? hmm weird, because 95% of my playthroughs are unmodded, and i still play it regularly. i would be extremely shocked if im the only one in the world not using mods

and hell, before mods were on consoles there were STILL plenty of people playing it

[–] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Skyrim is a classic game, and there are always going to people playing it, like there will always be people playing Half Life 2, Mario and Tetris. But I think what makes Skyrim stand out is that it's still exciting a decade later because it's still changing and improving. Amazing groups of people are dragging that game into every new generation and changing it in every way imaginable. It has infinite replay value. So it has the draw of just being a great vanilla game but also the benefit of mods. It's safe to say it wouldn't be anywhere near as popular today without the huge library of mods.

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i disagree with the last point. mods definitely helped, but skyrim was a complete cultural phenomenon even to people who had no idea what mods even were. it was extremely highly praised and sold great on consoles. i think it would have been a classic regardless

[–] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

I agree it would have been a classic without the mods. What I'm saying is it's better than a lot of other classics, as a gaming experience, because of the mods.

[–] icecreamtaco@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I played it vanilla first time in 2022 and it was amazing