Recently, a group of modders released their own Community Patch for Starfield, representing a collaboration working to improve the studio’s new IP. Creative fans have crafted mods left, right, and center since the game’s release, and that’s without official modding support from Bethesda.
In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Timothy “Halgari” Baldridge, one of the founders of the Starfield Community Patch, spoke about the efforts being put in to fix issues with the space-faring RPG. Halgari broke down how Starfield’s hindered modding potential is a bit of a sore spot and how digging around reveals game code that prepared for those features, but they aren’t there yet.
It looks like a plan, according to Halgari, that Bethesda “would add modding some day” to its new IP but hasn’t yet. He goes on to say that people can mod Starfield because “we’ve modded the other games using the same engine and we know what to do.” Without Bethesda’s official creative kit, it’s a difficult task but not an impossible one.
Hundreds of issues and counting
The Bethesda community content manager Catograffi echoed this in the modding Discord, and explained why modding wasn’t given a “UX revamp” on the developer’s website when other sections were. They say mods were “dead last for priority,” and that “when the pandemic hit it was easy to put it on the back burner.”
The comment is in reference to the UX revamp mentioned, providing an explanation of the technical aspects and circumstances that led to the site’s neglected UX revamp.
“So, a ton of folks view Bethesda.net Mods every day . . . but what most modders don’t realize is, the vast majority do this in-game. And in-game, you can’t even see IDs.
This is why descriptions don’t support text formatting or hyperlinking – none of that would appear in-game. A description that heavily relies on formatting may end up translating poorly in-game, where most of the audience is. (Although I’d still like to get this, if I can.)This is also why all of Bethesda.net got a UX revamp pre-pandemic, except Mods. Mods was dead last for priority, and when the pandemic hit it was easy to put on the backburner.”
Catograffi’s full explanation via Discord.
So far, there are over 400 issues the Community Patch is looking to tackle, with the team wondering whether Bethesda will get around to addressing them officially. The feeling, it seems, is there’s less support from the studio than people like Halgari would like when it comes to the Starfield modding community, especially with projects such as this.
Back in September, Bethesda’s Todd Howard confirmed official modding support was still part of the plan. He also noted Creation Kit 2 would head to Starfield in 2024, which hopefully means those on Xbox can also explore fan-made creations.
As of writing, the Starfield Community Patch is quickly approaching 40,000 downloads on Nexus mods. The team has already launched several updates, with more on the way as they tackle the growing list of Starfield’s bugs and errors.
If you’re interested in downloading the Starfield Community Patch, you can get it from Nexus Mods. The mod is running under the MIT license. You can also get involved by joining the Discord channel and/or joining the growing list of contributors.
