You dont need the LE on Steam, you could have vanilla + DLC.

They could possibly verify digital purchases on the PlayStation and Xbox networks but I suspect the majority of console users own disc copies. I own several copies of Skyrim for consoles and most of them are discs.


Verifying disc sales would not be practical. And if Beth only offered it for free to the people who purchased full digital copies (game plus all DLC) then those who bought it on disc would complain it was not fair to them.

Oooh this is a 'blue touch paper' topic.


Well.....let me add a bit to the potage magnifique......


I do have to say I think Pete Hines explanation is flawed. He says in the linked article "While pc users do not have any merits to buy the new version, console users do"


But.....pc users DO have, as he puts it, "merits" to buy the new game......because for the first time they are getting a 64 bit product with all the already quoted advantages that confers.


The FAIRest way to handle this would have been for Bethesda to have simply charged EVERYBODY the same.


Its gonna be a great game.....pc users who want the 64bit architecture and console users who want whatever mods we can get......should be VERY HAPPY to pay for that......imo I guess.


No one......should be expecting the new version for free.........support your favourite game developer and just pay up guys!


Bethesda has however, pulled an insidious wild card with this. They KNEW how divisive such a move would be amongst the communities and I for one think its a bad show on their part to do this......

Good post Rick. I pretty much agree with everything you just said. What I object to is the whiny tone of the OP and others (not you) calling it "immoral" and "unethical" and whatnot. PC users do get a benefit and I would have been willing to pay for it on PC. Bethesda is probably giving it for free in PC to encourage more mods being made on the new engine and ported to consoles to drive console sales. I can see how that seems unfair but I don't consider it to be "unethical" or "immoral". Beth is a company and they have the right to do what they think is in their best interest to maximize their profit.

All of your post, but especially this.




I never once in my life saw giving something away for free as being profitable. Even more so when you charge one set of customers something and another set nothing. You're just going to insult the first group.

I asked because I'm scratching my head wondering why you pointed me towards and article that explains nothing at all that we don't already know.

@Rosveen : Yes, Mod support, something that ships "as standard" in Bethesda games, has always been removed or just not longer added in every console Bethesda game prior to Fallout 4. I guess it's a different way of looking at it, but still true.

@mark5917 : Firstly, the article wrongly claims mod support as a reason, when Pete Hines simply says it's because it's a new console gen. That's probably partly to blame for why so many people mistakenly believe the Mod support is one of the central reasons for the pricing, and it shouldn't be ignored that it seems to be an assumption made by the author.

As for charging for a new console gen, there have been several games that allowed for free upgrades between console generations, as a game that came out on PC 30 years ago, is still arguably on the same platform, but consoles change every few years. And when I mention the Dishonored Definitive Edition, I appreciate it if people recognised the fact that it did NOT release for $60/￡40. You see, that's a game published by Bethesda where they realised that $60 is just too much for a remaster.

As other people in this thread have stated, Pete Hines' reasoning is flawed and the price is too much. Drop the price by half and it's more in line with being a remaster, but they are trying to "double dip" on the console audience, believing the power of The Elder Scrolls IP will push sales regardless. It's mercenary for sure, but I wouldn't even have come here if everyone was being treated the same. That's my only issue here.

I only own a couple of remasters myself, and as others have said, I got mine for free with Games With Gold. Paying for a remaster seems pretty pointless unless it was a REALLY good game, and most of them aren't worth it.

As for proving ownership, well, you cannot prove ownership of the game disc, but you can prove ownership of all the DLC. Xbox Live and PSN have a purchase history that catalogues all of your purchases. You can easily prove that you purchased the DLC, and that is at least equivalent to a notable discount. Digital copies can be verified and tbh, if you did purchase the DLC, I don't see why anyone would ever have done that if they didn't own the game already.

So, Pete Hines' explanation is slapdash at best and as the brazen "face" of Bethesda, it's his job to sell the idea and take the brunt of any backlash. This decision should not go unchallenged.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the legendary edition IS the game + dlc no?

It is, but the point I'm making is that you dont need the LE. Just the same affect of it. Go one step further, you can do both on console. However, if you buy the individual DLC, you still need a copy of the game that isnt the LE. Hence, if you own the DLC, you should have the game because there would be no point in buying them.

With God of War 1&2 HD Sony showed the world that console players happily pay for a game a second time to play it in a higher resolution. Bethesda merely follow that trend.

Pretty much this.

Of course, they couldn't use assumptions as a form of verification for a free version, and that's perfectly understandable from a business perspective, but that DLC is irrefutable, and should at bare minimum constitute a discount.

Bethesda's not a charity, they're not going to just give stuff away for free, they want to make profits. Thats why they want you to pay for it again. If you don't want it then no-ones making you pay for it. Whats so hard to understand about that?

PC owners get it for free because they're priveliged, they make the mods console users enjoy. Its a calculated move by Bethesda as PC users have little to gain by purchasing it again as most of the features are already available via third party means i.e. ENB, etc. Yes its unfair. But its good business.

PC owners are privileged?

That's going to go down so well in this forum.

Glad you said it and not me.

True though, isn't it?

That's not 100% true. Then again, there is really no way to prove that though without getting into legal trouble.

PC Master Race all the way.

Until console owners can make mods thats unlikely to change anytime soon. PC owners are cheap, as in free, content creators for Bethesda. And boy do they create a lot. This remaster likely wouldn't exist without them. Sure they'd likely come up with a "remaster" with better looking visuals but mods are the real selling point here. And its a big one. Without the new CK its impossible to upload anything to Bethesda.net and it has to be 64bit to match the console hardware. And you can't test a 64bit mod without a 64bit game...

Ditto.

Oh well thats ok then.....I'm sure glad that we have approx 10 million steam users who are "apparantly" all diligently making mods for console owners.


Infact that means console players practically have their very own pc user 'mod maker'.


Please tell me who mine is, cos I want to order a couple of new mods to be made as soon as possible.....


Tommy Rot!


A relative handful of skilled pc using mod authors out there undoubtably deserve much credit and maybe a free game as a token offer toward their great effort.


So what about the other 9.9 million steam users who make no contribution to mod production (and they sure don't pay for them). How does that, in Bethesda's eyes, warrant or qualify them for free games? It doesn't!


There is no logical justified answere other than "because Bethesda wish it so"


With this one stroke of divisive segregating action.....Bethesda has sought to drive a massive wedge between pc and console users.


It is clearly deliberate, but the true motive remains unclear to me.....I guess we will find out in time what they have in "store" for us.....


Edit....meanwhile....I am happy to pay for a great new "version" (lets not get picky over semantics) and I believe anyone who really loves this game AND wants the 64bit build should be also happy to just pay up.

that would cause an even bigger issue than the current one people are complaining about in this thread..


you would have to give a copy to every person who ever made a mod ever no matter how small. because if you start giving out free copies, based entirely off some form of arbitrary mod grading system (which is absurd, because mod quality really comes down to personal taste), the modders who don't get a copy but still put alot of time and effort into their mods would become highly offended and quite possibly leave the bethesda-game modding community entirely (or at least, stop releasing their mods to the public)..


and to be honest, the issues with the console mod distribution for FO4 that beth has been ignoring as well as the "paid mods civil war" fiasco (where the entire community has divided right down the middle about if it was good thing or not) has already caused plenty of highly skilled modders to leave the community, its in Beth's best interest to not split up the modding population any more than they already have..

Agreed.....I don't want to see ANY splitting of communities either within modding circles or between the pc and console factions.


But I am sure you see my point here......to be told that pc users get it free "because they make mods" is a ludicrous over-arching assumption at best and I would dearly love to see any stat that claimed a significant proportion of steam users were all mod publishers!

(note 'publishers'.....not just anyone who had a dabble with the ck for fun....I was talking about the guys with tangible download figures on the modding site..eh!).


Add in to that the paid mods issue, and the mod theft issues and what you have is.....I am afraid.....a multi pronged attack on the cohesive community spirit.


The question we should be asking is why?

I was just thinking about this....


Was it last year or whatever that a big outrage occured over paid mods?


Well it seems the biggest selling point, and is also the primary defense-reason for the pc-console free-paid split, that has been made about this game is mods. So I guess Bethesda is getting money for paid mods - and guess who isnt getting a piece of that pie...



Yes, why indeed.

sadly, there has been a wedge between those communities for decades, and most things that could help mend it have been unsuccessful because of the "big players"..



sure there are many of us "multi-platformers" (me included) who go around telling people "hey, games are fun on both types of platforms.. who really cares what its running on when the games are fun?"


but over the years the two "factions" lets call them have been conditioned to think poorly of one another.. many PC users are under the assumption that console goers are essentially a plague of immature kids, and the sole cause of game tech not advancing faster and cause games to be watered down (often ignoring the fact the latest tech is still a bit to expensive to be widespread among consumers as many PC gamers can't afford to upgrade their graphics card every year, which is even more of a cause than consoles).. meanwhile, many console players see PC users as "selfish rude elitist snobs who are constantly using cheats that don't care about others having fun"..



Rick, this "PC users getting the update free" won't put a wedge between the two, because that wedge has long since been stuck between them like Korean Demilitarized Zone (heck, look at the many people on these forums that keep posting "who cares, my PC version is already way better than this remaster, this a waste of time and money" while ignoring that for some people its a good thing)..




now for the sake of disclosure, something that I have seen help each side understand each other in the case of games with multiplayer is cross platform servers.. FFXI as an example had an extremely close and caring community, and the PC Xbox 360 and PS2 users were all on the same servers.. they saw as a result of questing and conversing with each other that regardless of their platform, in the end they were all just gamers, wanting to have some fun in their spare time..


however, in most cases, Microsoft and Sony have done what they can to make sure cross platform doesn't happen, and mostly because of marketing.. Sony and Microsoft (and Valve to a lesser extent) don't want the different "factions" to understand each other, because in that they will find out there really isn't as much separating them as they think.. they all want you to think "our platform is the best out there, forget those other ones, were the only one you'll want" because they each want to be "top dog" on the market.. the bigger the wedge between the three, the better for their marketing campaigns..




anyways, the over all reason comes down to trying to get modders to develop for the new version rather than the old one, that way the console goers can actually get a decent amount. as most of the issues with the current version for PC players can be avoided by the use of third party applications and files.. however, trying to give out free copies based off of the "quality" of a modders work as you suggested would just cause further harm to the already fractured group of modders these games have

There could be plenty of reasons why Game is free on PC :

1. If it was a paid game then Majority PC community would have given it a pass. there game already looks way better then remaster and they have somewhat made the game stable with the help of community so they don't exactly need the remaster. plus the mods functionality new remaster will break, every mods will need an update of some sort and skyrim modding community is old now. some mods have reached its end i.e they are finished modders have moved on from the game. even now we are not seeing any good mods just followers and boobs mod thats it.

2. Mods on the consoles is one of the main selling point for the remaster and mods can only be made by PC users so maybe thats why remaster is free on PC. they want everyone playing the game on PC to switch to remaster so that there will be lots and lots of mods and more sales on Consoles because of it.

3. Different platform. xbox360/Xbox1, PS3/PS4 they are different platform making a game specific to these consoles requires following specific API of these consoles whereas PC is always a same platform they don't have current gen/last gen [censored]. 90s game still work on current PCs.

Also, it would be too time consuming and too much of a hassle for Bethesda to figure out which mod authors were "deserving" of a free copy. There are what, something like 20,000 Skyrim mods that have been published over the past 5 years and well over 6,000 mod authors with over 1,000 or more unique downloads on Nexus alone, not to mention other mod hosting sites. Bethesda isn't going to sort through all that to figure out which of those mod authors should is most likely to develop mods on the new engine for consoles.

Then as I originally said, in fairness it ought to be charged to all.

Those who WANT it will pay

Those who are happy with their existing set up and don't really want it, would (most likely) not have bought it or used the free one, either way.

Modders who do not wish to create for consoles are not likely to start doing so just cos they got given a free download!!!


All this has done imo is create and/or add to existing divisions and discontent.


But I agree that somewhere at the back of this looms the dollar!

Creating "must have" mods for consoles, that can get charged for, is gonna make someone more wealthy!

Just not the guy who made it.

with some frigging.. certain older games have issues on newer OS's (the old disc version of Outlaws has some sound and texture issues, as well as it not installing normally due to changes in files formats over the years).. these issues can often be fixed through emulation Software like the popular DOSBox, or "manual installation" (manual installation is something you could do with older software, where instead of installing it normally through en executable on the disc, you would open the disc with an explorer window, and manually copy the relevant files into a directory of your choice.. since some older software didn't use compression methods for installations like newer software, after you copy the files properly into a directory on your machine, it will often act just like a regular installation.. you would just throw in your disc, and then run the exe from the directory you copied the relevant files into.. its the easiest way for me to get outlaws running at this point)..



point being, yes many older games can work on new machines, but they often require some effort to get running, and will often have issues running "out of the box"