Why Skyrim's Update is Causing Problems for Mods and Modlists 

Imagine seeing your 12 year old game still being played by so many people and only because of mods and you decide to ruin it and make them pay for mods only because youre a greedy company. I am genuinely scared for ES6

Looks like Starfield didn't do so well so they went back to their most popular game to milk it even more 😂

It amazes me at times how well Bethesda grows and expands their ability to colossally f()ck things up.

I'm convinced Bethesda knew exactly what they were doing with all these code changes. They realize that no one is going to buy mods when there are better free ones out there. Solution? Break all those mods yet again and keep breaking them until most modders that are publishing free mods give up on the game. Presto! Less competition for Bethesda's paid mods.

It's really incredible how Bethesda don't prioritize keeping mods working, given that Skyrim would be dead and forgotten without them.

#keepmodsfree - Also, Bethesda needs to leave Skyrim alone. Stop updating and let mod authors cook.

Bethesda has been possessed by the spirit of Nazeem! There you are, enjoying your modded playthrough, and suddenly this npc comes up to you and says: "Do you get to the Creation Club district much?" . . . . and as he walks off, your game suddenly crashes to desktop!

The last three times I started playing Skyrim again they updated It after around a week, It’s like they’re watching me

Its like they were annoyed Starfield got such bad reviews so they're punishing the Skyrim community.

Imagine creating a fanbase that would play for over 12 years only to make decisions to piss off and drive away that same fanbase, truly an epic achievement

Bethesda has shown in just a few years. 1. They dont care about the players. The people who buy their games, pay their salaries, and support their lavish lifestyles(have you seen Todds car and house?)2.They turn their back on Modders after using them for a decade. 3. They exist solely on hype and care about launch sales than making a quality game. This should be the nail in the coffin for them. No more debating it, this is the end of Bethesda.

3:38 that actually had me say “WTF” in genuine surprise. Any coder worth their salt knows you don’t just drop new code with some pre-existing code. Makes it hell to debug and more prone to having runtime errors. Should have just used a modular approach.

I hadn't played skyrim in many many years. About two weeks ago I got the itch. So i spent a few days looking through mods, learned how to mod skyrim as I'd never actually modded skyrim before, and started playing with the goal of exploring parts of the game I just never bothered with before. Then this happens and I updated the game on steam without thinking about it and can no longer even launch the game. GG bethesda, I already was most likely never going to play any future game you made but now you're turning me even more away from the games you made that I already own.

Bethesda Softworks. Some here in RU-vid call you a hero, but a hero doesn't use a power like modding to murder the Game and usurp it's functionality. You started this war, plunged Skyrim into chaos, and now the Mod Community is going to put you down, and restore the peace.

thanks for highlighting how much trouble this 'update' has caused players that many big names on YT have failed to cover or glossed over.

The biggest issue is all the mods that are not going to be getting updates as they have been abandoned or otherwise put into retirement as their final versions. This isnt a small update this changes fundamentals that effect how mods must interact with the games files and assets. If one is lucky a mod might get a forked version or patch released by some other mod creator, but even this is far from ideal as it addas another layer of complexity and yet more opportunities for issues to arise. This situation reminds me very much of the ArmA 2: Operation Arrowhead, which was received a large final update which introduced new bugs and changed aspects of how mods interacted with the game. This broke nearly every large mod (for a game with a big modding scene) long after many of those mods had stopped development and had the teams behind them dissolve. The vast majority were never updated again, thus removing the ability to use nearly all of the most fleshed out and popular ArmA2 mods without running older versions of the game for both client and servers. This also had the added effect of killing of a lot of the modded servers which made a up a bulk of the games remining multiplayer activity.

Modding has finally reached a point where you can mostly play on AE 1.6.640 and not really think about the compatibility of your mods. And then this happens. It's not that hard to update the game while NOT breaking the current modding framework. (By framework, I mean essential DLL plugin mods and other various required mods for a decent modlist nowadays.)

As someone that plays on console, I got super excited when I realized there's no longer a 100 mods cap. Then I started to feel I was going crazy thinking I forgot how to mod with how many issues I've been having, but no, Bethesda is somehow just that self-destructive with their most successful game.

In short: Bethesda is trying new ways to make all previous mods non-functioning in order to earn money on paid mods. The result will be that people abandon Skyrim. It's becoming to complicated and frustrating to mod your games. And people do NOT want to pay for mods when they can have them for free via Nexus or other sources. Especially not when Bethesda is trying to choke all other mods than their paid ones. People are also getting tired of constantly having to fix and install their mods again and again every time Bethesda updates or change the game. After 3355,9 hours played I finally deleted the game. Time to move on.

I wonder if Bethesda are trying to push everyone to the latest version by doing all of this. At the same time, it could truly just be laziness, complacency, incompetence, or any combination of such things. Regardless, I think they've shot themselves in the foot here. Mods are the only reason I've played Skyrim since my initial playthrough in its launch year. If Bethesda's games become less and less friendly toward the modding community and the possibilities for what can be done start to dry up, I think that'll eventually bite them in the ass when it comes to sales.

I knew when I got the info that the Skyrim would be updated and it would be focused on mods that the party would be over. I immediately set my steam to only update when I launch Skyrim and only doing it through nexus so it never updates. I've accepted that this might be my final mod run of Skyrim but I'll check the scene out in a few years.

Ah yes the joys of modern gaming ☕

I think Bethesda is perfectly happy to make free modding difficult so it pushes people towards paid mods out of convenience.

These problems with mods in Skyrim is not by accident. By making sure that old mods get screwed up, it makes it certain that players will need to replace their older free mods with newer paid mods. This will ultimately ruin not only Skyrim, but all other newer Bethesda titles, as they plan to roll out these paid mods eventually to Fallout 4, Starfield and others. One of the reasons that Skyrim and Fallout 4 are considered by many as some of the best open world RPG games ever is hands down due to mods and modders. When there have been problems with these games or grind/poorly thought out gameplay, players have been able to make the game whatever they want to play, and in the process dramatically increased the positive reception of these games. But greed at Bethesda has made them forget that for years it has been mods and modders that have made their games the success that they have been. I think going forward that opinion on these games will take a decided downturn.

how come a gain that revolve so much around the modding community can manage to be so hostile against modder?

Not a good strategy for BGS. I assume this is out of greed rather than laziness. They really want you to pay them more money for modding going further rather than being friendly towards free modding community which is literally the reason we still play this ancient game. It's pretty insidious actually that they would try to capitalize on people coming back from Starfield. SF was ok, pretty good even, but I'm already done playing it a couple months after release. This is unlike TES and Fallout which have staying power for many, many years beyond release, the difference being mods, easy. Now they want me to choose between a version that supports the latest Creation Club content or whatever it is, and the stellar free modding community content? Guess what, I'll downgrade versions even on Steam, which is an arduous task but it can be done. A Skyrim with only the ability to use CC mods...don't make me laugh, average/bad RPG in 2023 at best. Big ol' FAIL for Bethesda, wow.

This kind of makes me happy that I only ever play the Legendary Edition of skyrim and never have to worry about all these updates breaking things. Sucks for anyone who wants access to it on steam though.

I'm surprised anyone who uses mods on the steam version still has auto updates enabled for Skyrim, just disable updates and only use the skse launcher to launch the game. It's always been the case that anytime bethesda made any changes to creation club (adding or removing paid mods) they updated some game files as well, I've no idea why they designed it that way. I have heard though that apparently this latest update changes that so that in future creation club updates won't require game updates. I'm on AE v1.640 (and I did not update to that until it had been out for almost a year) with 300+ mods and very rarely get any problems or crashes and for me it's the most stable version of the game. I will not bother with this latest update at all as it mostly bug fixes for CC content (is releasing bugged content a requirement for Bethesda?) with some minor performance optimizations art and lighting fixes.

"The mods will fix Starfield!!!!!" Brother, with how Bethesda have begun treating modders, I honestly doubt many are going to put up with them

I'm genuinely considering switching back to legendary edition at this point. I know most modern mods won't be available for it, but at this point I just want a stable build where I don't have to constantly worry about these issues.

Glad I set Skyrim SE to only update on launch and starting the game with the script extender exe doesn't trigger it. I've seen that update sitting there, and from the sounds of things, it can just continue sitting there.

I marked my AppManifest for Skyrim as Read-Only right before Anniversery Edition dropped. It's completely prevented my copy of Skyrim from updating. All my mods still work, without any need to update them. It *does* mean I can't install any newer mods published after AE, but you know what? I'm content with my game exactly as it is.

Thank you. I've been looking for a sane unemotionally charged chat update on this topic. it was brilliant,

The "ID", or more accurately the file version, is not exclusive to ESL plugins, it applies equally to all plugin types. Just like the game executable went from 1.6.640 to 1.6.1130 in the update, the plugin files went from 1.70 to 1.71. This was the first plugin file version change in years.

What if instead of updating a 12 year old game, they put all that manpower and money into updating the massive game they just released three months ago? The one that's already lost almost its entire playerbase?

What’s crazy is I’ve just bought my first PC since 2010, have steam installed looking forward to catching up on years of modding only for this…. Lmao

I was initially not worried since I had disabled auto-updating on steam but for some fuckin reason steam decided to change that and my Skyrim updated anyway. I swear, sometimes it feels like todd Howard himself has a big red button labeled "BREAK SKYRIM" that he presses at random times.

I have had a nightmare from this update. After hours of work I managed to get things running, but still have mesh conflicts I cannot fix, so just have to put up with the odd smooth purple objects, and burning firewood being orange clay.

DIC for president 😉. You're the best with the modpack videos and now Skyrim News! Also I really like your current RP series (although I'm still behind current), so keep it going and thanks!

#keepmodsfree

Your skyrim looks very good, what mods are you using for textures, enb and trees?

A couple of weeks back I got Skyrim SE modding fully working in my Steam Deck with Mod Organizer 2 under SteamOS. Took me a couple of nights to figure it all out and make a nice modlist for a new playthrough on my Steam Deck... I am glad I made a whole backup of my Skyrim SE folder, just in case an update would screw it up, because here we are again...! An update to a 12yr old game... And Gabe!? Why the *peep* are you forcing us to update our Steam games!!? I just want a moment to show my big fat middle vinger to Bethesda and Steam...! The Skyrim Steam version modding community was basically split in two before this update: Skyrim AE and Skyrim SE. I fear it'll be split in three now I think: recent Skyrim AE Creation Store, Skyrim AE, Skyrim SE. Oh... And there is the GoG version too with no Creation store. Edit: apparently, Skyrim AE is available at the Epic Game store too... Maybe we are all better off with the GoG version? I know I am done with all these forced Skyrim updates with the Steam version . I am going to figure out the pro's and cons modding the GoG version. Maybe i'll buy the GoG one in a sale some time.

I only have a hundred mods or so beyond the cc ones and I was quite happy after updating skse yesterday as everything was fine and my game booted up to my last save from 2 months ago with no hiccups. always wait a few days after the update for skse to get updated.

Very good info! For me I can't even get Vortex to run it anymore. I'm going to try to switch to MO2 to see if that will help. What we need is a video of how to fix this mess.

I am very close to either stop modding and playing Bethesda games all together or as you already mentioned move to using the GOG version especially since the one fix that actually matters is already backported. But also one addition in the update you forgot is that modders now have access to a new function of the game (that "can be accessed from the.exe" not exactly how it works but we are all about keeping it simple here 😉) when they are writing their papyrus scripts (the language for the scripts used together with esps mods and by the game for quests etc) for their mods. And those functions when used by a mod will also crash on older versions of Skyrim when a mod uses them. (That said those changes are planned (or maybe even already) to be modded into the old versions as well by the backport mod you mentioned.)

So, I was lucky enough to see a video a couple weeks back teasing this update from Bethesda so I took steps to keep it from updating my install. I am currently running the latest version of Nolvus, and I still have not updated the base game. So, I should probably already know the answer to this question, but since I've taken those steps I am assuming that I won't have to worry about any of these issues UNLESS I update, correct? I don't need to use the downgrade tool because I've never updated to begin with, so I am assuming these changes won't affect my game unless I update the game, correct?

Very informative, thank you. BTW what modlist are you using in the video?

thanks for explaining that simply and quickly!!

Since beth can no longer (who knows) shove another Skyrim remaster down our throats, they decide to be as clever as to screw gamers again and monetise mods. All of this to make up for the fact Borefield is barelly selling as they hoped for. We have to accept the Beth we knew is long gone and TES VI will be utter crap.

My game of a whole year littarly stopped working after the update 💀👍

let's HOPE that this doesn't delay Skyblivion

Would you guys recommend Oldrim or SE for a heavily modded playthrough after the update?

this recent update has made it even worse now half of my mods keep disabling themselves.

I have had some very hard days to fix my 1.59.7 version and I had made it much harder than was neccessary. So at last and after three complete, downloading, frustrating and downgrading loops, I downgraded the game with "best of both" downgrade and added the mod "Backported Extended ESL Support". With the newest SKSE and an old USSEP even Alternate Start works again and I can play with all my previous mods. Hope I could help.

I started playing the game for the first time in over a year and while I’m currently bashing my head against the wall figuring out how to fix this mess

Thank fork I set it to update when I start the game! Only been starting it through SKSE which Steam doesn't count as starting it. Been sorting out my mods on my new pc ready for my holiday.

Things like this kill games

What is the modlist used in this video? Looks beautiful and refined

Bethesda have basically the only continuously played game that would flourish from no developer attention whatsoever. They are doing literally less than nothing

I haven’t even gone into the mod/ creation screen and I noticed that my quest log screen has some sort of weird space between the quests and between the save, etc screen ..and when I scroll up and down it shakes …so already this ‘update’ is messing up things…blasted Bugthesda🤨

Oh no, our new game is being reviewed negatively! Time to ruin the modding community, the only thing holding us up!

bethesda: don’t worry we’re not gonna break everything with this update also bethesda: *breaks literally everything*

Is all this only affect the Special Edition or does this mess with the Legendary Edition as well?

Hey what fire fx are you using?? 5:07. What a beautiful bright orange torch. :)

Bethesda, on a continuing quest to kill their golden goose.

I was and still am so mad at Bethesda for this

Just spend a day rolling back and trying to get everything working again. No crashes in the areas you've mentioned so far thankfully.

Do I deadass have to update every single mod I have to accommodate the update or just selected few? I really need a support group.

As for shifting code about, code should be "open for extention but closed for modification". This is not as complicated as it sounds. Adding another swf file is extending the menu system and altering all existing menus to support a new menu is modfication. There are numerous unknkwn dependencies on some code so altering its behaviour should be done as a last resort. They probably got some junior guy to hack something in.

Ive never seen someone single handily ruin their own game I was pissed because I woke up to my game auto updating to the new version even though I know I turned off auto updates. I downgraded but I can't even get into the because it keeps crashing at startup and because nothing is updated I can't play on the new version either. All those mods by my favorite mod authors down the drain for the first time in so long I'm actually thinking of quiting the game. I don't understand what pocessed them to randomly decide to go and touch Skyrim after all this time. Making it so modders can get paid is cool and all but they could have added that without fucking up the whole game itself. Like I don't even know anybody that has ever even used mods from the creation club.

guys im having problem with installing skyui, what should i do? is there a solution for this ?

I just bought the GOG version. I will definitely prioritize my modding on the GOG version from now on.

Here's to hoping that this perpetual arms race of Bethesda breaking mods with updates, and modders having to continually fix a downgrader gets modders to eventually accept (at least partially) supporting non-Steam/older versions; instead of dealing with nonsense like older versions of mods being deleted (thank you arthmoor), or Wabbajack refusing to function without detecting a steam install of the game.

After 10 years of modding I'm done . My game is broken and for my own mental health I've deleted skyrim completely. Bethesda have milked their cash cow to death thanks to the Bethesda / whits

Hello! Thanks for the video, tell me these problems also apply to special edition?

I have a issue where my daughter has a player on her profile that used my load order on my series x . I got my profile working but every time I switch profiles her profile doesnt show creations or AE . What can I do if anything ?

comment to help algo, but yea fuck this update. i had to spend a bit looking into how to revert the damn patch. what a stupid move to wait so long to do any kind of fix to the game

Ngl I'm amazed this game is even getting updates after so many years of being out in the world. I launched Skyrim on my PS4 recently to play my last save and found a wholly updated Mods&Creator Club tab and everything rearranged. Wild! You'd think a game that has been running almost exclusively on mods for the past x years would be left alone, but noo lol. Thank you for explaining what happened! I'm now a bit worried for my PC version, gonna check it at the first opportunity as I've modded it a fair bit.

Hey, do installers for huge modlists exist? I wanna get back to Skyrim again, but im waaay to lazy to figure out modding, especially with Anniversary Edition problems. I dont wanna spemd 3 days to mod up my game again.

I just reinstalled skyrim on ps4 and the add-on section of the menu isnt even showing up, like did they just remove it or is something broken?

Glad I didnt downloaded the update :D my modlist still works fine, tho dont dare installing anything new tho

modding skyrim is a lot harder now ;-;

In goldenhills plantation barrels in basement thing area by secrete switch not showing up, it show bag of flour and lantern floating in air. also missing texture for barrels by stable.

Is there a way for me to specifically see which mods are and are not working?. Like a logger or something. I’m newer to this stuff and I use vortex

I literally only need a new version of Scaleform Transformation Plus and I can fucking play again. We're all waiting on the Author to release a 3rd update. NEVER FORGET: *TODD LIES. GAMERS DIE.*

Havent played in so long, started playing it modded and it does nothing but crash. Shame.

Thanks for being informative. Any other videos I've seen just complain about greediness, etc., which doesn't quite explain what's going wrong.

Does anyone know what is currently the best version of skyrim to mod? Im running 1.5.97 but ppl are saying its outdated and newer versions are better.

I have no hope for another elder scrolls or fallout, 76 and starfield were absolute dog shit, starfield is the only game that's ever hit me with a sense of dread when thinking about playing it, it's so soulless and when you look at the credits it all makes sense. Fallout 4 had some warning signs but it was still had a little bit of character, with a good mod setup and hardcore/survival mode you can have a great time. Starfield is just fast travelling to perform monotonous tasks, plus it looks and runs like a cripple? I can play metro exodus enhanced edition at 72fps with ray tracing, hairworks, physics at 1440p with dlss on my 3080, a game that literally looks a generational leap from Starfield. Meanwhile Starfield was dropping into the 30s with a mix of low settings below native 1080p, not to mention it didn't even release with anything besides FSR. Don't even say oh it's because it's so big and open and there's so many npc's, the witcher 3 had more lively towns and metro exodus had more characters shoved into little metro tunnels than I've seen in Starfields largest city. Thank God for modding community, new vegas especially. Btw Blood West is a great game.

Wait, I have a question about this new update. I have Skyrim on my PS4 Pro, all kitted out with mods that I like, and when I saw an 11 GB update start for a version 1.29, I paused it and went to look for a reason for why there was such a big update for a game this old. Will this update break all my mods on my PS4 version Skyrim? I have stopped the update for now, but this is annoying, because now that it's there, I likely wont be able to access the Mod Online in the options, if I wanted to switch stuff around...

After an unfortunate mishap which required me updating my game, I have to say that this time around (even after a clean install) it was so much more painful getting mods to work. I got things up and running thanks to stumbling across a very helpful comment on the nexus, but this update in particular really has caused a bunch of problems.

Wtf are they still touching this game for, go work on starfield and fix that, sigh....

Bethesda definitely did this on purpose. Since Starfield is a poorly received title, and AE wasn't responded to well either, they had to find a way to make money back. I'm surprised they just didn't go full paid 'Loot Boxes', then they wouldn't have to share any of their income with those slaves.. I mean paid content modders. As far as TES VI goes, I doubt that title will do well either after all of this bull-puckey Bethesda pulled, and they deserve to eat it for this reason. They're going after Fallout 4 next I hear, so they're essentially going to alienate the players of two popular titles to sell sh*t to the mentally incompetent who can't recognize that they're being fleeced once again.

I need help I have a bug where mods just don't show like in the title screen there's no mod part in the menu just credits and the creation club In game there's only The same thing is like my game just doesn't have it????

I've been unable to get SKSE64 to work on my Steam Deck. It was working on my first LCD model, but when I got my OLED I wanted to redo some mods, and it stopped working. I keep getting stuck in the character creation menu. Can't even bring up ShowRaceMenu without getting stuck at the save and name prompt.

Think about this why are they updating a 15 year old game? Im done with bethesda. Go back to 1.5.

Man if Bethesda ruins it's modding scene for their games I might as well kill myself. Personal story but Bethesda games for the longest time when my depression was at it's worst was the only thing that kept me going.

this why you shoudnt cheer when big company take over another publisher they want their money back no matter what the cost is, they will turn your favourite IP into cash grab or worse make developers shut down their studios

i cant find out what in my modlist isnt allowing me to start a new game and all of my save files were corrupted and deleted.

if you have mod organizer 2 and you run the game through skse and change skyrims update priority in steam then you can play your game exactly how it was with no issues. thankfully i anticipated another update and now i have a perfect mod list but i can't get any new ones and it sucks for people that have had their games broken 😢