Mods on console was one of the selling points of Bethesda’s latest, Fallout 4. Now, months after it was initially announced (and released on Xbox One) Bethesda have released a statement saying that Sony will not allow it. That means that as well as Fallout 4, the upcoming Skyrim Special Edition – whose major selling point was mods – will not be receiving them either on PS4.
Bethesda’s reasoning behind Sony not allowing it is that “they will not approve user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition.” While no direct reason is given, we can quite easily presume that Sony do want users being able to “do anything.” Sony have always had problems with network security issues and people – even if it is a very slim chance – gaining access to more software than before only further elevates that risk.
While I have been a large criticizer of Bethesda recently, especially when considering the poor performance of their titles on Playstation 4, this decision does firmly lie at Sony’s feet. From the beginning Bethesda promised that mods would come to Xbox One and “they would work with Sony” to achieve it on their platform too. While it is unfortunate that Bethesda took this long to confirm the impossibilty of it, from their statement we can see they did try: “Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive.”
Bethesda “hope to find other ways user mods can be available for our PlayStation audience” but if we’re being honest, it probably isn’t going to happen. Meaning of course, that, at least for the Playstation crowd, Skyrim Special Edition will be a much harder sell.
You can read Bethesda’s full statement on the matter here.
