Starfield was released last September and was received with mixed reviews. Among other things, the project had a number of technical problems that are still being fixed. The situation on PC was saved by user modifications, but the long-awaited release of the Creation Kit toolset, designed to make modders’ lives easier, caused a new scandal.
Listen, pay!
Todd Howard’s projects have achieved their legendary status for many reasons. One of them is the full support for user creativity, thanks to which games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are alive more than 10 years after their release. Bethesda has always released a special Creation Kit tool for its projects, which significantly simplifies the creation of modifications.
Recently, the Creation Kit was released for Starfield, but with a big twist — a special currency called Creation Credits appeared along with it. It is sold for real money — 100 credits for $1 — and is needed to buy modifications. Starfield Premium Edition owners received 1,000 credits as a bonus — another way to advertise the game’s ultimate edition.
It is noteworthy that not only cosmetic changes are being sold, but also two full-fledged additions.
The first is an expansion of the existing bounty hunter faction, the Trucker Alliance. It costs 700 credits or $7 and adds new gear and missions.
The add-on is called Trackers Alliance: The Vulture. During the storyline, we are asked to find a certain veteran of the colonial wars, who was declared wanted by the Freestar Government.
The second is a layer of new mechanics related to resource extraction in space. It costs less – 500 credits or 5 dollars. It was not made by Bethesda itself, but by a third-party enthusiast, with the company’s approval.
The add-on is called StarSim: Mining Conglomerate and allows you to join the Argos Extractors family to dive into asteroid mining, protecting vital resources, and managing the Argos mining station.
Victim of corporate culture
Players were not very happy with this innovation – Bethesda was accused online of not only being unable to fix the technical condition of their own game, but also trying to sell user modifications.
This is sold as “creations” from a separate menu in the game – specifically so that it is impossible to issue a refund or write an angry review on Steam on a separate page for the add-on.
Another famous studio, Capcom, has suffered from something similar lately. Last year, they declared war on user modifications, starting to sell various improvements for their games in the form of add-ons, even in older projects. This year, Dragon’s Dogma 2 suffered, offering to pay for resources that are easy to obtain in the game.
It would seem that Bethesda could have taken such a step under the influence of Microsoft. The “Greens” are trying with all their might to recoup the 70 billion spent on the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. But Bethesda already had a precedent for selling such add-ons – a similar scandal arose with Skyrim and Fallout 4. And they were the ones who launched the trend of in-game monetization of single-player projects, starting to sell an add-on with horse harnesses in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, back in the days of Xbox 360. Not to mention the terrible Fallout 1st subscription for Fallout 76 – another project that was in a terrible technical condition at the time of release.
So since a fight was inevitable, they did not hesitate to take advantage of the chance.
In addition, Starfield sales are limited by the Game Pass service, where the game is available to all subscribers in the standard edition. Consequently, developers and publishers have to resort to such meanness to raise the profit statistics of a project that has failed in the media space. Whether Starfield has failed in terms of sales is unknown to us, since there are no open statistics anywhere.
Under the auspices of Microsoft, Bethesda no longer needs money, but its owner does. Phil Spencer and his board of directors stand over the acquired studios and milk them for every last coin. Even if it costs them their principles – full support for modifications has always made this company a favorite among players, and here they decided to monetize it, albeit partially.
By making decisions like these, Bethesda is destroying the remains of a shaky reputation that was already damaged after the release of Starfield and Fallout 76. Yes, they fixed the latter, at least. But now they have once again taken a step towards a typical AAA studio, becoming a victim of Microsoft’s corporate culture. Milk while there is someone to milk!
Summary
Starfield was Todd Howard’s dream for a long time, but it ended up being a nightmare for Bethesda. The game’s release left the company with a bad reputation, and the decision to sell custom mods that included entire parts of the game for real money only made things worse.
The project is still in poor technical condition, and it will be more difficult to fix it – Bethesda may well start selling user fixes for real money. If it gets completely desperate. But I want to believe that this will happen very soon.
Alas, if you are under the wing of a dragon, then you yourself turn into a fire-breathing, gold-loving flying lizard. And under the influence of Microsoft, the once beloved by gamers Bethesda has turned into another AAA publisher, from which you can expect anything but a step towards ordinary gamers.