Bethesda confirms that Starfield will have official mod support in 2024

In an interview, game director Todd Howard announced that Starfield would have official mod support in 2024. Since the game's early access release, dozens of unofficial modifications have been made available online, ranging from those that allow Nvidia's DLSS upscaling technology to those that make the inventory more compact and user-friendly. Official modding tools, on the other hand, make it simple to create new, original content like as additional planets and story missions, thus allowing for more experimentation. This was the norm for Bethesda games at launch, when the modding community was heavily active in fixing issues and improving the experience owing to a strong grasp of the technology.

"When the mods are ready, you will be able to do almost anything as we have done in the past, and the mods will be supported next year, but we will do it in a big way because we love it too," Howard told Famitsu (machine translated by PCGamesN). The statements echo a Reddit AMA from 2021, in which he revealed that Starfield will have "full mod support" like prior titles and that they'd want to see more modders earn a living from it. This is, of course, in reference to Bethesda's hiring of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim modder Elianora Creations to add some of the environment debris and lighting in their upcoming open-world game. Indeed, the influence of modders is so great that Bethesda's titles dominate the top five most popular games on Nexus Mods.

The official mod support timetable is pretty comparable to past titles such as Skyrim and Fallout 4, with the former receiving its share four months after its November 2011 release (early the following year). Meanwhile, six months after its November 2015 release, the Creation Kit rendered the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Fallout 4 fully moddable. Given this, it's probable that Starfield's modding tools will take longer to materialize, given that it was built using the revamped Creation Engine 2. The same engine will power the highly anticipated The Elder Scrolls 6, which has recently entered the early production stage.

For the time being, PC gamers may experiment with the various unauthorized modifications, which range from resolving small annoyances in Starfield, such as the lack of a FOV slider, to a performance increase mod that squeezes out more FPS without losing visual quality. There have also been some intriguing developments in the modding scene, with some players thinking it would be amusing to pretend that the game is also accessible on PlayStation consoles. One such mod replaces the Bethesda entrance splash screen with the PlayStation Studios animation, purely for aesthetic purposes. It's worth noting that executing console commands or activating modifications in Starfield removes unlocked achievements. However, Nexus Mods user Priqrade quickly created a hack that circumvents that restriction, ensuring that you don't miss out on any of them during your playthrough.

Starfield is now available on PC, Xbox One S/X, and Xbox Game Pass.

Tags: #Starfield #PC #XboxOne #XboxGamePass #Bethesda