Now that I’ve had some time to digest the news of Bethesda’s in-house mod solution (http://mods.bethesda.net), and seen how it works, I am cautiously optimistic about the future of modding being in the hands of the company instead of the community.
At first, I was worried… Coming so soon after their failed attempt at monetising modding with Valve, I feared that their new in-house distribution solution would be used to try to re-implement monetisation, without the hassle of doing so on an existing platform where before it has always been free. They have not yet done this though, and it is my hope that they heard their community the first time and continue to resist the temptation.
Functionally though, this service is a beautiful improvement to their games. It has been a long held truism “Don’t buy a Bethesda game for console, PC’s have mods!?”, which while still true (consoles don’t support AS many mods), is significantly less so! This will be significant boon to their console sales, and facilitate (hopefully) a more pleasant and less divided community.
I can’t wait to see what they do next!