Last year, Bethesda announced something unprecedented- the console versions of Fallout 4 would be getting mod support! This was truly great news, as the longevity of Bethesda games is ultimately down to the excellent modding community that they enjoy on the PC, which keeps the games alive for years on end.
And when Bethesda announced that the Xbox One and PS4 versions of Skyrim: Special Edition, the long awaited remaster of Bethesda’s 2011 hit RPG, would also be getting mod support, well, that was even better, given that Skyrim is a much better game than Fallout 4 to begin with.
However, even as mods came to Xbox One earlier this year, they were mysteriously delayed on the PS4 at the last minute- and when Bethesda were asked for any updates on mods for Fallout 4 on PS4, they always, always refused to comment.
Well, today they shared an update, alright. And it turns out that the dream is dead: mods will not be coming to the PS4, for Fallout 4 or for Skyrim Remastered. And the reason? Well, it turns out the reason is Sony.
“After months of discussion with Sony, we regret to say that while we have long been ready to offer mod support on PlayStation 4, Sony has informed us they will not approve user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition,” Bethesda said in an update on their website.
“Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive. We consider this an important initiative and we hope to find other ways user mods can be available for our PlayStation audience. However, until Sony will allow us to offer proper mod support for PS4, that content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PlayStation 4 will not be available.
“We will provide an update if and when this situation changes.”
This is, honestly, unacceptable from Sony’s end- they’ve been denying customers options for far too long (they have already blocked the release of ARK and EA Access on PS4 before), and it’s getting out of hand. I have to hope that Sony’s fanbase will take them up to task for this.