The Most Popular Mod For Fallout 4 Is The One That Removes The Title Screen Crawl For Bethesda's 'Creation Club'

from the modding-out-the-mods dept

You may recall that a few years ago, Valve attempted to rollout a platform for video game modders to make money from their efforts. It was an altogether messy attempt for any number of reasons, but chief among them was that the modding community and ecosystem has long operated as a labor of love and not one in which money is exchanged past the point of asking for donations. What Valve attempted to do was fundamentally change that ecosystem without providing a great deal of transparency as to why. One of the primary early adopters of this system in the game publishing community was Bethesda, which opened up Skyrim, a game both wildly popular and one with a robust modding community, to this paid mods platform. In the wake of the backlash, Bethesda ended up refunding all of the mod purchases gamers had made.

But then it much more quietly rolled out its Creation Club, which was something of a paid mods 2.0 attempt. For Fallout 4 in particular, the Creation Club platform was one in which both Bethesda and outside modders could have additional content published for the game in a way codified and supported by Bethesda itself. Outside modding groups would be paid for this work and, in turn, gamers would pay for the content through Creation Club rather than buying the more traditional DLC. It was something of a trade, in other words. No annoying DLC, but pay for the mods of choice through Creation Club.

So, how is that going? Well, the Creation Club community is still there, but relative to most modding communities there isn't a whole lot being offered up, nor purchased. Despite a huge portion of the game's title screen now dedicated to a window for "Creation Club News", gamers don't seem to be adopting it en masse. Unlike, say, Nexus Mods, long the go-to site to find game mods for Bethesda titles. In fact, one of the site's most popular mods for Fallout 4 is a simple mod that gets rid of the title screen crawl for Creation Club.

Enter the “No More Creation Club News” mod by a modder named InAComaDial999. It’s currently the second most popular file of the month on Nexus Mods’ Fallout 4 page. It gets rid of the ad. That’s it. I imagine, though, that people aren’t downloading this mod because they’re aesthetic purists. They want to stick it to the man, and this feels like a tiny middle finger they can deploy at will.

Look, there may be a way to make paying modders for their work a reality that doesn't almost universally piss off gamers. I personally am skeptical, because the modding scene has always thrived outside of the profit motive as a community. But whatever the answer to that open question is, it should be clear by now that paid mods 3.0 better have a significant amount of thought put into it compared to the first two versions.

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Filed Under: creation club, fallout, mods, title screen

Companies: bethesda, valve