Let’s call a spade a spade
At this year’s E3, Bethesda announced the Creation Club — a new ecosystem of game content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim. The pitch is that these add-ons (think weapons, armor, accessories) are developed by either Bethesda employees or third-party creators, and then they go through an internal review by Bethesda to ensure that they’re completely compatible with the game. Because of that extra degree of quality control, the Creation Club is a paid system.
Today, the first Creation Club implementation has begun. As outlined in a post on Steam, the program is in beta in Fallout 4 on PC. In order for it to work, Fallout 4 has to be updated to version 1.10. The Creation Club is said to be coming to PS4 and Xbox One tomorrow.
The pricing isn’t widely available yet, but the consensus seems to be that 100 credits is approximately equal to $1. Here’s a screenshot of the storefront, which shows some power armor for 500 credits which is about $5. Users are gifted 100 credits the first time they sign in and credits are transferable between Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PC and Xbox; credits are not transferable between games on PS4.
As for the initial batch of content, it’s mostly kitschy reskins and spins on existing things. The two most novel items are probably the Power Horse Armor and Morgan Yu’s suit from Prey. (Both are in the gallery below.)
Bethesda’s official stance on the Creation Club is something akin to “these aren’t paid mods” even though they are very obviously paid mods. In the Creation Club FAQ, Bethesda defends the new system by noting all the internal review that this new content has to go through to ensure it works flawlessly within the game.
Fair point, but it doesn’t change the fact that these really are just paid mods. Also, $5 seems about 10 times too expensive for a set of power armor.
Predictably, there’s substantial backlash from the community over the Creation Club. Social media channels and the Bethesda forums are full of people who are voicing their displeasure over the program. At the time of writing, there were approximately 250 comments on the Steam page announcement, and many of them contain the phrase “Fuck off, Bethesda.”
For anyone who’s put off by this, the silver lining is that the unpaid mod scene will continue to live on. The Creation Club allegedly won’t interfere with that.
Fallout 4 Creation Club Now Live [Steam]
