It’s hard to write about Skyrim in 2021 without making some sort of joke about how it’s been ported to just about everything short of a pregnancy test – actually, wait, Skyrim is playable on pregnancy tests now. Never mind.
Ten years on, Bethesda’s behemoth RPG has repeatedly reared its head across just about every form of hardware under the Sun, from smart fridges to every machine from the last three console generations. It’s easy to see this quality of endurance as something derived from, well… quality. Skyrim is a good game – although it wouldn’t have enjoyed half as much longevity without the tireless work of modders dedicated to proving just how good it can be.
Related: The Forgotten City's Dialogue Tree Boss Fights Are The Future Of Fallout Speech Checks
Last week, Nexus Mods announced it would be implementing a new policy change in the near future. Essentially, mod authors will no longer be able to remove their creations from the site – they can ensure they don’t crop up from internal searches, but if they’ve been added to a group of mods known as a ‘collection,’ they will remain available to download via said collection so as not to compromise coherence among the mods included. Basically, Mod A might be compatible with Mod B, but only because of Mod C – messing around with individual parts of a mod collection can break the whole thing.
In principle, this makes sense. You don’t want an author deleting their mod and all of a sudden a million players aren’t able to access their save anymore. Really, though, they can just uninstall the collection, innit. If they want, they can download mods individually and apply them as needed. Collections are a cool feature, but an ultimately unnecessary one – given the immense cost of their implementation, it would be better for everyone if the entire concept was ditched.
What cost, you ask? Well, in case you hadn’t heard, world-renowned Skyrim modder Arthmoor is removing their mods from Nexus before the new policy is activated. If you’re wondering who Arthmoor is, they’re the person behind Skyrim’s beloved – nay, legendary – Alternate Start mod, a fanmade alteration that helped kickstart the scene in earnest. For those of you who look at Skyrim and think the modding community is just like any other one, bear in mind that The Forgotten City started life as a Skyrim mod before eventually launching as a standalone game last month. If you read my review, you’ll know that it’s already established itself as one of the best and brightest games of 2021.
I understand that policies like these have their own inherent caveats and rationale. The modding community is a strange place, where talented creators put together incredible projects that are fundamentally incapable of netting commercial gain. It’s a community that is fuelled by passion and a desire to improve fans’ experiences with their favourite games. But it’s also a community that perpetuates other communities surrounding it – without modding, iconic series like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout wouldn’t even stand in the shadow of the juggernauts they’ve become. Opinions of modding are polarizing by nature, but its importance to Skyrim is irrefutable.
On the contrary, Skyrim is one of the most important games to Nexus’ enduring popularity. If you go to the Nexus Mods homepage, the site’s background is literally the Dragonborn. Not only did Skyrim revitalize modding – it pushed it to heights it could never have reached without it. To oust revered Skyrim modders from the scene as a means of chasing some kind of policy that – let’s be real – hardly even matters is a real kick in the teeth.
At present, Arthmoor is the only high-profile modder to announce their desire to take a stand against Nexus’ new rules. Given that the policy has yet to come into effect, though, there’s plenty of time for others to follow suit, and Arthmoor’s prolificness and ubiquity in the scene will no doubt encourage others to at least consider taking similar action. I respect Nexus Mods and all of the people who contribute to it, but right now, Skyrim modders are hurting – and the only way to help them is to reverse the decision and allow them to maintain full deletion rights over the projects that they, in the spirit of fairness, currently do and forever should own.
Next: First Impressions: Dreamscaper Is A Gorgeous, Poignant Roguelite To Rival Hades
