I was fascinated, given the airtime that Bethesda gives to modding,

that Pete Hines understands that only (approximately) 6-8% of the Bethesda fan base use mods.

From a Game Trailers (Bonus Round) panel on MMOs (slight paraphrasing):

"We’re known for the stuff we do on the PC side - there’s all these PC mods.

But the percentage of our fanbase that has ever used a mod is like (whatever?) 6% or 8%.

And when you talk about Skyrim that is like 10’s of millions of people who have never played with a mod in their life.

How do we do that better?

How do we bring that fun experience to more?

And the answer is [console mods - longer discussion about Microsoft and partner engagement]. "

http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/ggfkk9/bonus-round-quakecon-2015--the-new-era-of-mmo c.14.00

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The impact of mods on console could be great.

If mods on console are easy to 'consume' as community DLC that have some level of vetting,

then take-up rate could increase significantly.

Many threads seem to have the answer 'there will be mod for that', but that misses the point that the vast majority play vanilla.

When I used mods on Oblivion (my last PC platform Bethesda game)

• many were amateur
• many were broken
• many were indulgent fan service
• many were nvde mods

But among the dross, there were gems and those mods brought real game enhancement.

I would welcome a console mod approach that offered more winners, less fillers.

What impact do you think console mods will have on modding activities that whilst enthusiastically followed and discussed,

is currently very much a minority activity?

I understand they said that making mods would be a PC only thing (console gamers will just get access to the PC mods). I think thats a mistake, if you want people playing on consoles to play with mods you should give them access to their own version of the GECK

How would they do that? There's no console version of GECK.

They don't create GECK for PC users to be nice towards PC users. The main reason they create GECK is to have a tool they use themselves that makes it easier for them to create the game. Together with a bunch of other tools like 3DS MAX, Photoshop, audio editing software and so on and none of those are available for consoles either.

Seeing how GECK is mainly made for themselves, and not for us, they aren't gonna spend vast resources to re-program GECK and remove all the Windows specific API calls just to make an editor they will never use themselves.

I don't think you understand quite what you are asking for here.

Also, even if a game is single player, console makers are really, really, really against anyone having control over any sort of game editing, cheating on their consoles. Most of this has to do with content.. they don't want their consoles associated with anything that people (parents) could find offensive. If they give people the tools to mod on consoles that's opening themselves up to a lot of silly, easily avoidable legal issues.

You can certainly bet that it'll take quite awhile for any substantial community mod to come along for F4 on the console and the first one that does will have to be quite amazing and well put together. In the short run we'll perhaps get some new guns, reskins of outfits, maybe some funky hair and eye colors and that's all we'll see for quite awhile.

I'm curious how they come up with that number, and I wonder what that % is when applied to just the PC user base.

I wonder this because the top mods at Skyrim Nexus have some pretty big download numbers. SkyUI, for ex, has 4.9 million unique downloads (9.9mil total). Unofficial Skyrim Patch, 3.1mil. CBBE body, 3.9mil. Quality World Map 2.9mil. Etc, etc, etc.

If 4.9mil people is only 8% of the playerbase, they sold a lot of copies of Skyrim. (Of course, I also wonder how they're calculating "unique downloads" and "total downloads" )

But yeah - getting mods onto consoles can clearly increase the % of people using mods, given that console users couldn't at all before. Things like the Steam Workshop making it easier for a "layman" player to install mods, also has to help. (Which makes me think that there's even more people who've used some of those mods I mentioned, if they're available on the workshop at all - because I can't see too many people getting the same mod from both sources....)

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I'd also think that a number of the basic improvement type mods - like UI tweaks, world-map changes, additional player home... simple stuff. (Well, assuming they're still "simple" to make for the console version )

Stuff I'd not expect to see on consoles - major texture & model improvements, anything requiring a script extender or other external utility program, and anything with nudity & six. Also very large & involved content mods, if only because they'd possibly be complex installs and/or take too many resources to run if they add too much stuff.

...oh, and anything including remakes of copyrighted content from other games/consoles. (Can't see a Master Chief mod showing up on PS4. Probably not even on XBox.) Or even stuff from non-game sources, like the Thomas The Tank Engine dragon mod in Skyrim. Witcher armor mods. Etc.

I personally see the big modders not really caring if mods work on console or not and mostly focusing on PC. Even though consoles are technically weak PCs. I think for them worrying about supporting 3 separate platforms will be to much. I could be wrong but just my gut feeling.

ok 6-8% of players use mods... But that's because mods have until now only been available for the PC players. Here's some info I dug up on Statistic Brain regarding Skyrim unit sales. We will assume sales percentages are equal to player percentages.

Only 14% of all units sold were on PC. That means the 7% (average of 6-8) of all players using mods is actually 50% of the relatively few players that had the option to use mods. Making mods available for the console crowd will probably see the same relative percentage of players using mods, perhaps even higher since I imagine installing mods on the console will be a simpler process than it is on PC.

These aren't real numbers of users because unique downloads cover all versions of the mod - and obviously people redownload whenever an update comes out, so one person can end up with 10 "unique" downloads.

WHY DOES THIS STILL PERSIST

This is info from release week. http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/11/skyrim-sales-estimated-at-3-4-million-in-two-days/ 15 November 2011. Please, people, stop spreading this misinformation. If you want to know the number of Skyrim PC players, http://steamspy.com/app/72850is our most reliable source other than Bethesda themselves (who aren't talking). We have no way of knowing the distribution of sales across platforms, I think VGChartz is the only site that attempts to estimate it, but their numbers for Skyrim are rather iffy.

Good anolysis, HD. (Edit: disputed? ok well still interesting, TBC)

In terms of numbers, even a few armor skins or weather tweaks could be a huge deal.

Though I'm sad not to be riding Thomas The Tank Engine through downtown Boston (actually no.)

Exactly. So much truth in this one statement.

Yes, exactly. I was wondering this, too. I am always suspicious of numbers like these. I would have thought that we'd have learned to take everything that Pete Hines says to the media with a grain of salt by now. I doubt that anybody knows with any certainty what percentage of PC users use or make mods.

Yeah, that is like a radroach. No matter how many times you stomp, beat, shoot or nuke it, it still keeps coming back.

People, when will you learn? There's a thing called digital distribution which is almost impossible to count and PC sales particulary are mostly digital.

They know how many downloaded a mod from Steam Workshop, but I have no idea how they measure the number of people using different methods. Can Steam detect and collate info about active .esp files?

The website I took that info from shows last updated April 12, this year and has separate figures for release week and total. http://www.statisticbrain.com/skyrim-the-elder-scrolls-v-statistics/

False, false, very false info there. STOP USING THOSE PAGES AS A SOURCE!!!

14% of the total sold amount is ~3.3 million. That barely counts one third of PC copies sold.

As far as I can determine, Skyrim sold about 23 million units and 5.94 or maybe 9.2 of those were on Steam. Information is definitely no bible in any way though,

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/introducing-steam-gauge-ars-reveals-steams-most-popular-games/

http://steamspy.com/app/72850

Makes sense it would be higher. Gaming as total last year was around an 80 billion dollar industry and PC was 24 billion.

Look at the SteamSpy link Rosveen gave!! Over 9 million owners of PC version.

Also worthy to remember that many PC players bought it twice. Why? The cheapest way to get DLCs is to buy Legendary Edition.

Not that I know of. I play offline and, as far as I know, Steam is not transmitting any of my data back to Valve, either when I play or when I mod.

By "different methods" do you mean a different mod site, such as Nexus?

I know the website. I also know that the numbers you quoted haven't changed in three years (or is it four now? When did my college years go? ) and that they didn't include digital sales. The number of concurrent players on Steam is also suspect, the peak was 280k the day after launch. I'm not 100% sure it was never beaten later, but all gaming websites mentioned it as the previous all-time non-Valve game record when GTA V came out and surpassed it by 20k.

It's kind of funny.. when you see a number like 23 million you think "Wow, that's a lot of people who own skyrim".. That's like the entire state of Texas. But when you think the opposite. 7 billion people have not played and do not own skyrim... 23 million no longer sounds like a lot.

Im sorry but there would be no legal case against the mods. The game is rated M for mature with those reasons being Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, sixual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs. Pretty much what you find in a GTA game. So that would pose 2 questions, first being if this game would see legal action for something that is in multiple other games, then why would this be the exception to legal action? and the second question would be, why are the parents buying this game that is rated M for their kid? The obvious reason is that if you are under 18 (17 in a couple of states) you must have a parent or legal gaurdian present. So if the parent buys the game for their kid, then the kid seeing that kind of content is on the parent, NOT the devloper because the developer reserves the right to make a game how they want.

That's not going to stop litigious "helicopter parents" from suing Microsoft or Zenimax.

Ok well I can't vouch for the website being 100% accurate, I just found it on a google search. I will definitely entertain the possibility that the numbers are wrong but the fact remains, until now only PC players have had the option to use mods. Saying "only xx% of Skyrim players used mods" is misleading when the majority of player didn't even have the option. You have to look at the PC players only and calculate the percentage from that group along since that group alone had the option to use mods. Doing that will give you a realistic estimate of how many total players would have used mods if they had had the opportunity.

"helicopter parents" would very likely not even buy their kid the type of game that they'd be inclined to sue over. That type of parent is the same type that would likely research a game before buying it for their kids.