It's time to bring back the horse armor memes

Jun 12, 2017 06:31 GMT  ·  By

Bethesda just announced Creation Club for Fallout 4 & Skyrim Special Edition, which signals the introduction of new paid content, from either the original developers or the community.

Some of you might remember that a while back Bethesda and Valve wanted to introduce something called paid mods. Basically, modders could build new content for Bethesda’s games and sell it though the Workshop.

The community’s reaction was swift and brutal, prompting the two companies to back down, or at least so we thought. From the looks of it, Valve has moved past it, but Bethesda still wants to milk the mods for all their worth.

It’s a new type of saddle for your horse, from Bethesda

The original idea seems to come from Bethesda's paid horse armor that was released years ago for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. They were mocked for the idea, and it even became a meme. Not deterred by the failure, they tried again, bringing Valve into the mix.

Valve quickly determined that it was not something that people wanted and went back to free stuff. Obviously, Bethesda still wants to make it happen, and now they even have the support for it. They are putting their games on their own platform, called Bethesda.net Launcher, and that's probably the new direction for the company.

Now, during the E3 2017 event, Bethesda announced the introduction of Creation Club for Fallout 4 & Skyrim Special Edition. The company dressed it up a little bit differently, saying that older mods won’t be monetized and that some of the new content will be made by them.

It's not money, it's credits

All in all, the community is not buying the explanations, and they are already berating the company for the strange decision. Furthermore, Bethesda explains in an FAQ how the payments will be managed.

“Creation Club is available via in-game digital marketplaces in both Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition and purchased with Credits. Credits are available for purchase on PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam. Your Credits are transferable and can be used in both games on the same platform.”

The company seems to think that if they call it “credits,” it might make a difference, but as far as the community is concerned, this whole thing is about paid mods and there is nothing to be done about it. At this point, it’s gone much farther than just an announcement, and the infrastructure seems to be in place.

People and gamers of the world, please give Bethesda’s new “paid content” a warm welcome.