Bethesda confirmed today that Sony has put the kibosh on the publisher’s plans to bring Fallout 4 and Skyrim mods to PS4. In the official statement, the Maryland-based company didn’t leave any ambiguity on where the blame should fall, saying “we have long been ready to offer mod support on PlayStation 4, Sony has informed us they will not approve user mods the way they should work.”
This is, quite simply, about as big a blunder as Sony could make this week. Setting aside the tepid response to the PS4 Pro announcement (you know, the $400 console that works best with a $600 TV you’re maybe thinking about buying) this news comes on the heels of a positive summer for Sony’s rival Microsoft. The August 2016 sales numbers are in and it’s looking like the Xbox One S helped Microsoft outsell the PS4 for its second month in a row. Considering Microsoft has been getting pummeled in the sales war, the back-to-back wins could be a fluke or could be a trend. Time will tell. But what isn’t going to help Sony is the news that one of the most exciting features coming to this current gen of consoles will likely be absent from the Sony line-up for a long, long time.
I can hear the fanboys squealing now “but this is JUST Bethesda games, Sony isn’t saying they’ll never do mod support.” And, while technically true, it’s like saying you’re building the all-time greatest basketball team without Michael Jordan. No console publisher has done more to facilitate and support its modding community than Bethesda. Period. It is far and away the industry leader when it comes to bringing PC-created user mods to the console space. I spoke to Todd Howard at E3 this year and he was candid about the fact that Bethesda was doing the heavy lifting on the technical side to make it easier for all publishers to get mods on all platforms.
So to say Sony doesn’t need Bethesda to do mods overlooks the rather large fact Bethesda is the only publisher at the moment making tangible progress on providing mods to players. And now that support is gone, as I expect Bethesda to hold quite a grudge given the sales hole Sony just created for their upcoming Skyrim re-release. Because the biggest selling point for that relaunch are mods, and now that they won’t be on PS4 Bethesda has to expect the sales will take a hit, given that PS4 has approximately double the install base of Xbox One.
This also doesn’t bode well for the PS4 Pro because the majority of mods are for graphical enhancements. The current modded out version of Skyrim on PC looks “ shit hot ”:
Sure, Sony has said developers will be doing plenty of forward compatibility upgrades themselves (and not always for free ), but that pales in comparison to the volume of work done by modders. So Sony is heading into 2017 with a new console that won’t support fan-created content designed to showcase the very same visual improvements that are the entire selling point for the PS4 Pro. And when Microsoft drops the Scorpio in 2017, which is rumored to be more powerful than PS4 Pro , you better believe it will remind you ad nauseam that mods are fully supported. And unless Sony reverses course on their anti-mods stance, Microsoft will always have a graphical edge. “Oh you think Prey looks great on that PS4 Pro? Well here it is on our more powerful console and here it is on our more powerful console with a fuck ton of free enhancement mods, too.”
This news is just terribly timed for Sony. The PS4 Pro announcement was underwhelming and fans were already beginning to question whether Sony had their interests at heart or were just out for a cash-grab. And now the news that heaps of free content won’t come to the flagship system because Sony wants too much say in the process doesn’t help. Nor will it help that the company who is actually figuring out how to do this for the benefit of the industry now has zero incentive to provide solutions for the system specific challenges of porting mods to PS4.
So Sony doesn’t care about the companies that provide mods. It doesn’t care about the fans that make mods. And it doesn’t care about the fans that want mods. Do its fans care? Let us know in the comments!
