The premium add-ons could re-appear in the future

Jul 17, 2015 11:02 GMT  ·  By

Bethesda confirms that it's going to re-evaluate the release of premium mods for its games after launching Fallout 4. According to the publisher, the idea that was tested temporarily with Skyrim proved to have both advantages and disadvantages.

Bethesda's games have experienced huge success across many platforms, but they've always had a special place on PC, thanks to the thriving community that pumped out all sorts of different free mods for the game, keeping it fresh and attractive.

The company sparked a pretty big outrage earlier this year, when it introduced alongside Valve premium mods that forced players to pay a certain sum of money in order to get the extra content for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Due to the backlash, the companies backed away from the idea.

Bethesda will re-evaluate premium mods in the future

Now, while talking with GameSpot, Bethesda's Pete Hines confirms that the company might re-evaluate the idea behind premium mods in the future, probably after it's done working on Fallout 4, its next role-playing experience.

According to Hines, while some saw downsides, many saw advantages to the project, particularly modders who got very little from donations but quickly received a lot of income from the temporarily premium add-ons.

"I think our stance on it is we're going to re-evaluate it going forward," Hines explains. "I think that we feel like there is a case to be made that people who spend a lot of time working on mods ought to be able to have a way of monetizing what they're doing. I honestly, genuinely, don't know what it means for the future. It was an idea we worked on with those guys for Skyrim; it didn't pan out. It came back down."

Considering Bethesda wants to release mods made on PC for Fallout 4 onto the Xbox One or PS4 consoles, it's going to be interesting to see if it brings back the premium idea and how it wants to reward mod makers.