The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is receiving an update to its controversial mods marketplace. (Image source: Bethesda)
Bethesda has announced that the Skyrim Creations community content marketplace is on the way. The new store is part of an update to the Skyrim Special Edition and Skyrim Anniversary Edition, and will include freely-available items from the old Mods and Creation Club platform. Creators looking to sell items on the new shopfront will need to be verified.
Exciting news for fans! Twelve years after The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim first hit the market, Bethesda Game Studios is making some long-awaited changes to the Creation Club marketplace for community-generated content. Verified Creators that sell content in the new Creations shop will earn a royalty for every purchase, but Bethesda has yet to share the exact revenue split.
The Creation shopfront is set to debut in an update to the Skyrim Special Edition and Anniversary Edition, and will arrive with an array of community-developed mods. Among others, the East Empire Expansion adds new quests and NPCs, Legendary Dungeons — Dwarven Delves adds two new dungeons to plunder, and Arquebus includes both a dungeon and a long gun to the game.
Credits from the previous Creation Club marketplace will also be transferred to the new system, and Creators will need to apply to be verified to sell items in the Creations shop. Verification isn’t particularly complicated and doesn’t even require previous modding experience, although Creators will need to submit a portfolio during the application.
For community members publishing free mods and creations on the Creations, no verification is required, but they will also not be allowed to charge for any creations until they are verified. Content that was previously freely available on the Creation Club will also be free in Creations.
Creations will be accessible practically everywhere you can play Skyrim — PC via Epic Games Store, The Microsoft Store, and Steam, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 and 5 — although the PlayStation version is more restrictive. Creators making PlayStation content will not be allowed to use external assets.
Bethesda also says that the Creations concept will make its way to “as many games as possible”, but provides no indication of which games will get the feature or when it will expand outside of Skyrim. This comment makes it seem as though Bethesda is using Skyrim, which already has a very active, dedicated modding community, to test the waters for its Creations program.
It’s important to note that the Creations marketplace will bring changes to what Bethesda originally offered when it released the Skyrim Anniversary Edition back in 2021, as the paid content coming to the Creations shop will not be included in the Anniversary Edition.
There has been a not-insignificant amount of backlash about the return of paid mods, with some social media users complaining that the content isn’t worth the money,