Why only Bethesda support player modding?

[tomomi1922]

Well, maybe beside The Sims, most of the companies out there don't give a crap about player modding. The Sims detests modders, but somehow they can't stop it. Bethesda built an entire Creation Kit and said 'here you go, have fun'

Things like Unreal Engine is not stable enough to support 3rd party mods? I can see this UE4 is the only engine that allows indie developers (aka smaller teams without heavy budget backing) to deliver AAA comparable titles. It would be nice if these indie developers have modders in mind. Some of these developers must have modded a Bethesda game before. They would understand how an outside fan based community can add so much content to the game, free of charge to the developers. Nexus is also free of charge from the developers. When I have a problem with my games I don't go nagging to Bethesda tech support (which is their duty), but I turn up to the internet communities (like Nexus) for solutions.

I understand, more work. But how much more work is there when the dev only need to do about 10% of the work (to provide interface and support) while the modding community provides completely free labor to fill in 90%, and the company wins 100%. Every mod that makes TES/FO great and worth playing is attributed to the games' reputation, not the modders. I certainly can't bring these mods to another game (I do honestly wish to). Imagine how much smaller the TES fan base if no mod exists?

Yet again, nobody out there sees the benefits and opportunities in 3rd party mods.

[Di0nysys]

They're a pretty old school company, privately held, and have a high rate of employee retention. Lots of old school devs over there. That mentality reflects in the types of games they publish; Elder Scrolls and Fallout which are open world Immersive Sim style games, a Doom reboot, Quake, a spiritual successor to Resident Evil, and Immersive Sims coming out of Arkane. Due to the special nature of their structure, modding persists. Modding's been a thing for them for over 20 years now, and its worked quite well in creating a long tail for their games. They also stayed on the same engine largely, so this all contributes towards them sticking with modding. I'd get alarmed if they got acquired by another company, or had a significant change of the guard in admin. But i get the impression the people over there get the value modding brings to their games.

[tomomi1922]

Oh I am not complaining about modding. I just wonder why other companies see no benefit in modding.

I have been working with a small game dev group doing mobile games. Although I have programming background, I am not their coder. I consult on the story/quest development side. The talk about moving to UE4 is on. Unity is in no shape to deliver a stable AAA sized game. That is not to say my team is in any shape to create anything AAA. But because we are with shoe string budgets, getting familiar early on with UE4 is not a bad thing if we fathom any bigger than Candy Crush wannabe.

Mods, I see 100 good reasons with 5 risks. It is a no-brainer. But the mystery remains ... why all the heavy weight players out there care nothing about mods? Blizzard did create a level creator for Warcraft III I think. And it was how DOTA came to birth, and now, the world famous League of Legends (nothing related to Blizzard, but we all know this kind of game came from DOTA, a mod of Warcraft III).

[Rasikko]

Larian studios also allows extensive modding to their games.

[tomomi1922]

Larian studios also allows extensive modding to their games.

I almost bought Divinity 2 on Steam when it was on sale, but missed the sale. I should have bought it if it really has a modding community behind :)

[Rasikko]

It certainly does, and the devs actually TALK at length to their players.. and most importantly when they list bugs fixed, it's not all short winded and stoic.