You may not have heard, but the Creation Club isn’t very popular. As Bethesda’s latest attempt to insert paid mods into the industry, the Creation Club is rife with bugs, scrambling people’s mods, and further tarnishing Bethesda’s dwindling reputation.

But one of the Creation Club’s most glaring problems affects players whether they use it or not. When the Creation Club was released, players quickly discovered it was downloading every single mod onto their hard drives whether they purchased them or not, taking up precious bandwidth in the process. If you own FALLOUT 4 and have a connection to the internet, this probably already happened to you.

Bethesda’s response to the matter is raising eyebrows, leaving many to wonder if the problem can even be fixed. On the official forums, Bethesda’s community manager “Cartogriffi” had this to say on the matter:

“This was a requirement for some platforms and how Creation Club needed to work. Most other games that offer similar content do the same. We realize this is a frustration point for players, and we are working on a solution to change the way this functions. On the PC, this will not happen with Skyrim Special Edition, and future releases for Fallout 4.”

In short, Bethesda is planning on fixing this problem on the PC, but the Creation Club can’t work on “certain platforms” without it. So what does this mean? Well, when you cut through all the PR-speak, Bethesda is admitting that they can’t fix the problem on consoles, at least not without major restructuring from both themselves and the console manufacturers. Sure, they’re promising to fix this on PC, but the Creation Club isn’t geared toward PC-users in the first place.

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The core of this issue is for those who play on console, where hard drive space is limited and precious as it is. Based on this statement, it feels like Bethesda is shrugging their shoulders and giving up. For now, if you own FALLOUT 4, your console will continue to download every single mod released on the Creation Club without your consent. In the words of one forum-goer, Bethesda can’t find a way “out of their self-made quagmire.”

Now, to be fair, the vagueness of this statement leaves room for future changes. Bethesda never goes into specifics on which platforms they’ll be fixing. They also claim that the hard drive bloat was due to requirements on “certain platforms.” Are these requirements still in place? Is there no way to circumvent them? If so, what sort of time and resources are necessary to do so?

We can only parse this statement so much, however. I’m trying my best to dissect the vague words of a company that isn’t known for its clarity or honesty. Until further notice, it seems Bethesda has no plans on fixing this problem where it matters most.

The Point

If this doesn’t get fixed, it will be the death knell of the Creation Club. As of now, the Creation Club consists of skins, gear, and various items that can easily be found for free online. But when Bethesda pitched this program, they promised story-driven questlines and significant changes to the game. If they can’t stop clogging our consoles with every mod, this will be impossible. Imagine your hard drive filled with several expansion-sized mods you can’t even access without paying. It’s completely untenable.

For that matter, won’t that happen regardless? Every mod, no matter how small, will continue to fill up our hard drives. Through sheer attrition, the Creation Club will slowly consume our consoles. I don’t see how long that can last without Microsoft and Sony stepping in.

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In the midst of all this vitriol, there comes a point where we have to ask: what is Bethesda thinking? I don’t mean that simply as an insult, nor am I questioning their ethically shady but logically sound business practices. I’m very literally wondering what their thought process is.

The Creation Club is a fully developed system that Bethesda must have been working on for quite some time. It was mired in controversy long before it even released, and Bethesda must have known they needed to bring their A-game to change people’s perception of it. At what point did they think forcing players to download their bloatware would be a good idea? How could they not know this would happen?

We’ve reached out to Bethesda for a statement, but did not receive a response.