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Bethesda's 'Totally-Not-Paid-Mod' Creation Club Is Live

PC, Xbox One, and PS4 users can breathe some new life into Fallout 4 and, next month, Skyrim.

Charles Singletary Jr

August 29, 2017 8:30 AM

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Creation Club is a curated and quality-controlled hub of mod content for Bethesda games. The developer has partnered with third-party devs and the top community creators for everything from cosmetic items to gameplay and it goes live on Xbox One, PS4, and PC today.

Mods are an aspect of gaming that console gamers have largely missed out on. With mods, the life of a game can be extended indefinitely as the community creates everything from skins to entire game modes. Community members even create fixes for troubling elements of a game that the devs may never get to.

Mods communities on PC exist with a lack of regulation that has made the move to home consoles quite a process, but Creation Club is a solid step forward. The platform was originally announced at E3 2017 and Fallout 4 is supported as of today with Skyrim Special Edition joining in next month. Credits in Creation Club can be transferred between the two games on Xbox One and Steam, but not on PS4.

Some will find issue with the fact that it's a monetized system, but Bethesda is hoping to ease gamers into it with 100 credits to use on Creation Club content. The flip side of this platform is that creators will get paid for their work. The existing, free mod system will still be in place and Bethesda is taking steps to make sure Creation Club content is original and that free mods aren’t retrofitted for the new platform. On the Creation Club homepage, a response to the question of CC being “paid mods” reads as follows:

“We’ve looked at many ways to do ‘paid mods’, and the problems outweigh the benefits. We’ve encountered many of those issues before. But, there’s a constant demand from our fans to add more official high-quality content to our games, and while we are able to create a lot of it, we think many in our community have the talent to work directly with us and create some amazing new things.”

Bethesda and paid mods have previously caused a bit of a storm in the gaming community, something our Chatty community weighed in on before. If you’re interested in becoming a creator for the Creation Club, there’s a form you can fill out on the platform’s official website.

Charles Singletary Jr

News Editor

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.