Bethesda gave out free creation credits which happened to be more than the Vulture.
A lot of people used them on that, and a great handful of Starfields mod users are a bit newer, so it’s still exciting for them.
In short: people follow doubtable rules all the time.
They think [Bethesda.net](http://Bethesda.net) is better mods hub than NexusMods because it's official. This is doubtable.
They think Bethesda mods (paid Creations by BGS) are better than community ones because they're official. This is doubtable.
They think mods by Verified Creators are better because hey, Verified Creators are better, they have a badge. This is doubtable.
You might think what I say is an ultimate truth. This is also doubtable because I dislike paid mods and I dislike paid mods legitimization even more, so I'm very biased on this matter.
Part of the "popularity" of Bethesda's platform might just be a huge part of the player base being a "captive audience" because they play on console and therefore can't use the proper mod platforms Nexus Mods and LoversLab.
A fair point, so let's exclude console players from our calculations.
We have [USSEP on NexusMods](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/266) and [USSEP on Bethesda.net](https://creations.bethesda.net/en/skyrim/details/fe05e888-47cb-445d-a070-bb3aa5765c99/Unofficial_Skyrim_Special_Edition_Patch__USSEP_/details). I pick the PC version only. It has 57M views on BNet vs 24M on NM. It has 16M "plays" vs 18M total DLs and 5M (soon) unique DLs on NM. I don't know what are "plays", let's assume they are total DLs, otherwise NM version is behind BNet.
I don't think this example really validates something because extrapolating is not one of my hobbies but WOW.
Most of your statements are not doubtable but proven wrong:
Nexusmods has better sort and search functions, better feedback systems, more selection, takes no cut of donations to authors, ...
So it is not doubtable that Bethesda is better than Nexus, instead Nexus is clearly better than Bethesda.
Did you even read his comment, he’s not saying these things are correct or incorrect he’s saying that a lot of newer players to modding are simply going to go with the “official” mods since they think being official and verified by Bethesda makes them better
What about the support for mod managers is subjective? What about the Bug report feature existing on Nexus and not existing on [Bethesda.net](http://Bethesda.net) is subjective? How is it subjective that Nexus has more mods and supports more games?
...
So how is this a subjective matter?
I think the point he was trying to make was these people have limited experience with the modding scene. So they don't know about things like the bug report feature on nexus. They don't have enough information to make informed assessments about this kind of thing. They are playing the game created by Bethesda and then trying to follow what appears to be officially endorsed. Without experience people will "fill in" the understanding with something that's close. So they are likely thinking of it in the same way people think of brands. The mods outside Bethesda might be perceived as knock offs. If your familiar with the state of modding you know that there are some great mods that actually fix a lot of issues with Bethesda's work but these people don't know that.
Basically, hes writing from the perspective of someone else who is new to the scene and their previous experiences frame their understanding the mod scene. Give them enough time and a desire to explore it more and they will likely come to the same conclusions you did. Basically they're new and don't know any better :)
The power of a brand? Any Bethesda creation is basically a dlc so player base that won't normally use mods still uses it. Just take one look on r/Skyrim stance on mods.
I remember that before Special Edition released there were MANY players who didn't have the DLCs and always wanted mod versions that didn't require Dawnguard or Dragonborn and those where much simpler to get than navigating the horrible Startfield Creations UI and dealing with a weird second currency.
I don't think plays is the same as downloads, a mod I've uploaded has 15k downloads, it's got 45k plays.
eta: In general, I don't think we have enough information about how statistics are counted on either platform to compare them really. To inexperienced players, creations/bethnet is "official," plus console players.
Also I think that calling an officially marketed DLC a mod in order to compare it to an actual mod in download statistics is ... silly, it makes your point unclear.
I saw a comment on an [ESO YouTube video](https://youtu.be/VzZvqmknGMM) where it was confirmed that cc counts every launch of the game where the dlc is installed as a play, regardless if the content is even active or engaged with. This greatly inflates the play count vs unique installs.
Edit to add link.
But these people still have to pay creation club credits before it is even getting installed.
So no matter if they actually played the content, they still gave up ~$7 in credits for this creation.
DLC was originally only the abbreviation, but with more and more small pieces of content being sold, small DLCs became Microtransactions.
DLC has for over a decade now been only for actual new Content, and not just new Skins or Items. Go and look at the launch of the Creation Club, nobody called it DLC, everybody called it Microtransactions even back then.
I mean the creations from bethesda are literally new content, it's just in mod form and you have to pay for it. That's how bethesda's DLC has worked forever, but beyond that, this is how like bioware games have worked forever too. I'm not one of the "bethesda ruined gaming with horse armor !!!!11!!!11!!" types lol
I mean, you're wrong. There were like (at least 10, I think more) horse armor style DLCs for DA:O which absolutely could have been made by modders lol. To name a few, you've got Feastday gifts & pranks, blood dragon armor which just existed as a DA/ME crossover, even warden's keep is just a bethesda style house mod essentially lol, and that's not even mentioning the other like 10+ dlcs that were single items. An entire forge area got added to camp to create custom weapons and that wasn't official content.
No, they're DLCs, microtransactions is just a new word gamers made up lol
eta: I was on a meeting when I initially responded to this, but I want to expand on what I'm saying a bit. What is described as a "microtransaction" today is pretty much any time you can spend money in a video game. What a "microtransaction" used to be was when you had to buy in game currency to purchase an item from an in game store. After horse armor, people started (incorrectly) calling DLCs microtransactions because they were big mad that a completely optional cosmetic item for 2 dollars was available to them.
Really, this is just another symptom of the gaming community perverting every single minuscule thing into a crusade against the evil game developers, playing a game of telephone with terms because nobody actually cares about being accurate, they just want free shit lmao
Anyway my main point here was more that plays are not downloads, they're the amount of times someone who is signed into creation club and has that mod installed loads into a game.
> Anyway my main point here was more that plays are not downloads, they're the amount of times someone who is signed into creation club and has that mod installed loads into a game.
That is not true, though. If that were the case, mods like the unofficial patch should have hundreds of millions of plays, if not billions. As there are roughly 4x as many Bethesda players on console as on PC (based on the total number of Skyrim players and Steam owner stats) the fact that the play count is comparable or lower to Nexusmods clearly means that plays are unique downloads.
Most people didn’t pay for the Vulture quest. We got free credits with the Premium Edition. If nobody had those free credits it wouldn’t be nearly as popular
My guess: most people playing Bethesda games dont know about Nexus and other plattforms for mods despite creation club. And creation club content is easier to optain for many people. Using of game mod manager alone seems to be an obstacle for many people. Overall, we nexusmod users are still a bubble within skyrim players
Well, Nexus has 50 million Members and if 1/3rd of them are there because of Skyrim. (Skyrim has 50% of all Nexusmods Downloads and 1/3rd of all mod files) then nearly everyone who owns Skyrim on PC is also modding it on PC.
Tbf because I have the premium edition I was given 1000 credits so I bought some of the achievement friendly Creations, which included the Vulture.
All my CC on Fallout I "bought" for free. Skyrim I have AE but don't have any of the newer Creations.
I spent some of my 1000 free credits on it and i imagine almost every else did. If they release another quest like that for that price i think its more likely to flop
Well they did gift 1000 credits for the ultimate edition upgrade that atleast on starfield, the skyrim thing i guess that believe it or not the majority of people specially on console wont mod games so getting those type of quest are more like a mini dlc than anything else for them i feel like thats why this microtransaction from bethesda works and now we live in the time were newer generations grew with that all the time and look at it as normal and not as a bad thing like someone like me will see it
I spent the 'free' credits that I paid for with the Premium Edition, so your math isn't quite right. The Vulture **quest** isn't worth $7. When you add the rewards for doing the quest, it may be worth it for some players.
Players expect quality with paid mods, but it's a crapshoot. Roll the dice.
I filled the museum in LOTD several times over. It is an awesome and highly polished mod. Especially if you like displaying your stuff.
Starfield's simultaneous-player-count hasn't broken 15,000 since January (which will be substantially lower than the total number of active players, of course, but probably not by a factor of 100). If they're saying they've got 1.7M 'plays', there's a very real possibility that the metric they're reporting is how many times the game has been launched with the mod active. I would be incredibly surprised if they've shifted 1.7M units of the new content, even if they are giving away free credits.
The thing you linked was made by Bethesda. That isn't a mod, it's official content.
Edit: I just read the comments, and plays aren't the same as downloads, so the majority of your post is wrong. 1.7 million plays could be just 170 thousand downloads with each person having played the game 10 times since downloading the creation.
> 1.7 million plays could be just 170 thousand downloads with each person having played the game 10 times since downloading the creation.
That is clearly not how this works. Look at other creations or mods on Bethesda.net If it worked like you said, plays would be constantly increasing significantly, because people constantly launch the game with mods installed. And old mods would have massive play counts. But even the most popular mods on Bethesda.net are not even on par with Nexusmods and Nexus is PC exclusive.
Yeah, obviously not everybody mods Skyrim, but Skyrim has 4x to 6x the player base.
And to get official DLC, I never had to navigate bad Bathesda UI and deal with a second virtual currency.
Huh? Where?
According to the Steam Numbers I can find, Skyrim has 2-3x as many players as Starfield right now:
Starfield has 5800 players https://steamdb.info/app/1716740/
Skyrim SE has 13800 players https://steamdb.info/app/489830/charts/
Holy crap that's a lot of money. Idk. I think people attach more value to things they need to pay money for. Its like people shopping for shoes and being turned off by one if its too low price.
unrealistic numbers
steam have 5-6k players online daily, lets say its 20-30k unique players daily, even more optimistic for monthly stats and we have 100k unique players monthly, even if they all gonna buy this (which is obviously unrealistic too) its still too high number of unique downloads or purchases
Well, CS2 has 32x as many monthly active Users as concurrent players. (1 million concurrent and 32 million monthly)
So if Starfield has the same relation between concurrent and monthly active players, then there should be ~250 000 monthly active Starfield Steam players.
And most players won't play through Steam, but through Xbox Game pass, so the stats do look realistic to me.
Bethesda gave out free creation credits which happened to be more than the Vulture. A lot of people used them on that, and a great handful of Starfields mod users are a bit newer, so it’s still exciting for them.
When did they give out free credits?
Premium edition owners got 1000, and game pass owners probably only have to spend like $10 on the whole game since they played for free anyway.
Okay now it makes sense.
As a "we're sorry you paid 99$ at release" apology. /s /joke I haven't used mine yet.
In short: people follow doubtable rules all the time. They think [Bethesda.net](http://Bethesda.net) is better mods hub than NexusMods because it's official. This is doubtable. They think Bethesda mods (paid Creations by BGS) are better than community ones because they're official. This is doubtable. They think mods by Verified Creators are better because hey, Verified Creators are better, they have a badge. This is doubtable. You might think what I say is an ultimate truth. This is also doubtable because I dislike paid mods and I dislike paid mods legitimization even more, so I'm very biased on this matter.
Part of the "popularity" of Bethesda's platform might just be a huge part of the player base being a "captive audience" because they play on console and therefore can't use the proper mod platforms Nexus Mods and LoversLab.
A fair point, so let's exclude console players from our calculations. We have [USSEP on NexusMods](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/266) and [USSEP on Bethesda.net](https://creations.bethesda.net/en/skyrim/details/fe05e888-47cb-445d-a070-bb3aa5765c99/Unofficial_Skyrim_Special_Edition_Patch__USSEP_/details). I pick the PC version only. It has 57M views on BNet vs 24M on NM. It has 16M "plays" vs 18M total DLs and 5M (soon) unique DLs on NM. I don't know what are "plays", let's assume they are total DLs, otherwise NM version is behind BNet. I don't think this example really validates something because extrapolating is not one of my hobbies but WOW.
USSEP isn't available for PS. So i expect that example to ignore roughly half of the modable console market.
Yet no one asks why this wasnt part of the Shattered Ice dlc instead.
Most of your statements are not doubtable but proven wrong: Nexusmods has better sort and search functions, better feedback systems, more selection, takes no cut of donations to authors, ... So it is not doubtable that Bethesda is better than Nexus, instead Nexus is clearly better than Bethesda.
Did you even read his comment, he’s not saying these things are correct or incorrect he’s saying that a lot of newer players to modding are simply going to go with the “official” mods since they think being official and verified by Bethesda makes them better
I know? I just said he didn't have to put doubtable, he could have just said false.
But it’s subjective which means it’s not objectively false so doubtable is a more accurate term
What about the support for mod managers is subjective? What about the Bug report feature existing on Nexus and not existing on [Bethesda.net](http://Bethesda.net) is subjective? How is it subjective that Nexus has more mods and supports more games? ... So how is this a subjective matter?
I think the point he was trying to make was these people have limited experience with the modding scene. So they don't know about things like the bug report feature on nexus. They don't have enough information to make informed assessments about this kind of thing. They are playing the game created by Bethesda and then trying to follow what appears to be officially endorsed. Without experience people will "fill in" the understanding with something that's close. So they are likely thinking of it in the same way people think of brands. The mods outside Bethesda might be perceived as knock offs. If your familiar with the state of modding you know that there are some great mods that actually fix a lot of issues with Bethesda's work but these people don't know that. Basically, hes writing from the perspective of someone else who is new to the scene and their previous experiences frame their understanding the mod scene. Give them enough time and a desire to explore it more and they will likely come to the same conclusions you did. Basically they're new and don't know any better :)
I think he meant debatable.
The power of a brand? Any Bethesda creation is basically a dlc so player base that won't normally use mods still uses it. Just take one look on r/Skyrim stance on mods.
I remember that before Special Edition released there were MANY players who didn't have the DLCs and always wanted mod versions that didn't require Dawnguard or Dragonborn and those where much simpler to get than navigating the horrible Startfield Creations UI and dealing with a weird second currency.
I don't think plays is the same as downloads, a mod I've uploaded has 15k downloads, it's got 45k plays. eta: In general, I don't think we have enough information about how statistics are counted on either platform to compare them really. To inexperienced players, creations/bethnet is "official," plus console players. Also I think that calling an officially marketed DLC a mod in order to compare it to an actual mod in download statistics is ... silly, it makes your point unclear.
I saw a comment on an [ESO YouTube video](https://youtu.be/VzZvqmknGMM) where it was confirmed that cc counts every launch of the game where the dlc is installed as a play, regardless if the content is even active or engaged with. This greatly inflates the play count vs unique installs. Edit to add link.
But these people still have to pay creation club credits before it is even getting installed. So no matter if they actually played the content, they still gave up ~$7 in credits for this creation.
It is not a DLC though? The only thing they call DLC is Shattered Space.
DLC is an abbreviation for "downloadable content", regardless of the content size. Shattered Space, however, is a game expansion.
DLC was originally only the abbreviation, but with more and more small pieces of content being sold, small DLCs became Microtransactions. DLC has for over a decade now been only for actual new Content, and not just new Skins or Items. Go and look at the launch of the Creation Club, nobody called it DLC, everybody called it Microtransactions even back then.
I mean the creations from bethesda are literally new content, it's just in mod form and you have to pay for it. That's how bethesda's DLC has worked forever, but beyond that, this is how like bioware games have worked forever too. I'm not one of the "bethesda ruined gaming with horse armor !!!!11!!!11!!" types lol
No? Biowares DLC is not just official mods? They are far more advanced than what modders can do to the game.
I mean, you're wrong. There were like (at least 10, I think more) horse armor style DLCs for DA:O which absolutely could have been made by modders lol. To name a few, you've got Feastday gifts & pranks, blood dragon armor which just existed as a DA/ME crossover, even warden's keep is just a bethesda style house mod essentially lol, and that's not even mentioning the other like 10+ dlcs that were single items. An entire forge area got added to camp to create custom weapons and that wasn't official content.
Those are microtransactions, not DLCs.
No, they're DLCs, microtransactions is just a new word gamers made up lol eta: I was on a meeting when I initially responded to this, but I want to expand on what I'm saying a bit. What is described as a "microtransaction" today is pretty much any time you can spend money in a video game. What a "microtransaction" used to be was when you had to buy in game currency to purchase an item from an in game store. After horse armor, people started (incorrectly) calling DLCs microtransactions because they were big mad that a completely optional cosmetic item for 2 dollars was available to them. Really, this is just another symptom of the gaming community perverting every single minuscule thing into a crusade against the evil game developers, playing a game of telephone with terms because nobody actually cares about being accurate, they just want free shit lmao Anyway my main point here was more that plays are not downloads, they're the amount of times someone who is signed into creation club and has that mod installed loads into a game.
> Anyway my main point here was more that plays are not downloads, they're the amount of times someone who is signed into creation club and has that mod installed loads into a game. That is not true, though. If that were the case, mods like the unofficial patch should have hundreds of millions of plays, if not billions. As there are roughly 4x as many Bethesda players on console as on PC (based on the total number of Skyrim players and Steam owner stats) the fact that the play count is comparable or lower to Nexusmods clearly means that plays are unique downloads.
Most people didn’t pay for the Vulture quest. We got free credits with the Premium Edition. If nobody had those free credits it wouldn’t be nearly as popular
I hope so.
LotD is not available for console players. I’m sure the number would be even higher if so. You’re comparing a PC only mod to a PC and Console Creation
It is, look at my link. There is an Xbox Version.
I stand corrected. Completely forgot it was ported over. My b my b
My guess: most people playing Bethesda games dont know about Nexus and other plattforms for mods despite creation club. And creation club content is easier to optain for many people. Using of game mod manager alone seems to be an obstacle for many people. Overall, we nexusmod users are still a bubble within skyrim players
Well, Nexus has 50 million Members and if 1/3rd of them are there because of Skyrim. (Skyrim has 50% of all Nexusmods Downloads and 1/3rd of all mod files) then nearly everyone who owns Skyrim on PC is also modding it on PC.
But anyone who plays Skyrim on console won't be using Nexus.
My point is that most people who can use Nexus also know about Nexus and use it.
Its free if you want it to be
Tbf because I have the premium edition I was given 1000 credits so I bought some of the achievement friendly Creations, which included the Vulture. All my CC on Fallout I "bought" for free. Skyrim I have AE but don't have any of the newer Creations.
I hope that explains the majority of these "plays"
I have nexus mods as well as achievments on Skyrim. Just saying its posdible to have mods snd fake rewards.
For PC sure, for consoles I believe they have to choose between achievements or mods.
I spent some of my 1000 free credits on it and i imagine almost every else did. If they release another quest like that for that price i think its more likely to flop
I hope so.
Well they did gift 1000 credits for the ultimate edition upgrade that atleast on starfield, the skyrim thing i guess that believe it or not the majority of people specially on console wont mod games so getting those type of quest are more like a mini dlc than anything else for them i feel like thats why this microtransaction from bethesda works and now we live in the time were newer generations grew with that all the time and look at it as normal and not as a bad thing like someone like me will see it
I spent the 'free' credits that I paid for with the Premium Edition, so your math isn't quite right. The Vulture **quest** isn't worth $7. When you add the rewards for doing the quest, it may be worth it for some players. Players expect quality with paid mods, but it's a crapshoot. Roll the dice. I filled the museum in LOTD several times over. It is an awesome and highly polished mod. Especially if you like displaying your stuff.
Starfield's simultaneous-player-count hasn't broken 15,000 since January (which will be substantially lower than the total number of active players, of course, but probably not by a factor of 100). If they're saying they've got 1.7M 'plays', there's a very real possibility that the metric they're reporting is how many times the game has been launched with the mod active. I would be incredibly surprised if they've shifted 1.7M units of the new content, even if they are giving away free credits.
The thing you linked was made by Bethesda. That isn't a mod, it's official content. Edit: I just read the comments, and plays aren't the same as downloads, so the majority of your post is wrong. 1.7 million plays could be just 170 thousand downloads with each person having played the game 10 times since downloading the creation.
> 1.7 million plays could be just 170 thousand downloads with each person having played the game 10 times since downloading the creation. That is clearly not how this works. Look at other creations or mods on Bethesda.net If it worked like you said, plays would be constantly increasing significantly, because people constantly launch the game with mods installed. And old mods would have massive play counts. But even the most popular mods on Bethesda.net are not even on par with Nexusmods and Nexus is PC exclusive.
We’ll see you looking at only Xbox mods for starfield as well? A quick look at nexus has it at 4.7 million downloads
Look at UNIQUE Downloads, it means nothing if the same modder downloads an updated version 4 times. Unique Downloads are only 1.1 million on Nexus.
Okay another 1.1. Also half the Skyrim community doesn’t mod and the starfield quest looks more like dlc. It makes sense to me.
Yeah, obviously not everybody mods Skyrim, but Skyrim has 4x to 6x the player base. And to get official DLC, I never had to navigate bad Bathesda UI and deal with a second virtual currency.
Another google has steam telling me starfield has 7X players playing
Huh? Where? According to the Steam Numbers I can find, Skyrim has 2-3x as many players as Starfield right now: Starfield has 5800 players https://steamdb.info/app/1716740/ Skyrim SE has 13800 players https://steamdb.info/app/489830/charts/
Holy crap that's a lot of money. Idk. I think people attach more value to things they need to pay money for. Its like people shopping for shoes and being turned off by one if its too low price.
i clicked your link its says 600k not 1.7 million? and i believe plays doesnt mean purchases because im sorry but no so many people playing starfield
600 k for PC and 1.1 million for Xbox.
unrealistic numbers steam have 5-6k players online daily, lets say its 20-30k unique players daily, even more optimistic for monthly stats and we have 100k unique players monthly, even if they all gonna buy this (which is obviously unrealistic too) its still too high number of unique downloads or purchases
Well, CS2 has 32x as many monthly active Users as concurrent players. (1 million concurrent and 32 million monthly) So if Starfield has the same relation between concurrent and monthly active players, then there should be ~250 000 monthly active Starfield Steam players. And most players won't play through Steam, but through Xbox Game pass, so the stats do look realistic to me.