Here we go again. RPG developer Bethesda Game Studios recently advised fans of its popular games, including Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, to log in and back up their game saves in anticipation of new updates.
“As a precaution, prior to these updates we encourage players to log into your game save if you haven’t done so in a while or manually save your load order,” Bethesda said on social media. “Once your load order is saved, you’ll be able to re-download your entire Creations list at once when the update is live.”
Fallout 4 will receive the first update on Tuesday, Aug. 18. The patch is supposed to bring “general improvements” to Creations. For most other games, stability updates like these would be nothing to worry about. For Bethesda games, which people love to play with third-party mods, it’s a nightmare scenario. Come Tuesday, there’s a good chance that many Fallout 4 mods installed in players’ games will break.
Some mod creators will immediately begin working on a fix, but they can’t do it until the update drops. Other mods may never be updated because their creators abandoned them. Already, mod creators are bracing themselves for an onslaught of unhappy fans whose games no longer work.
For two games that are constantly in rotation within the gaming community, this is a big deal. Just recently, Skyrim players started flocking toward a revolutionary mod that improves the game’s graphics without needing high processing power. Right now, on a random Monday afternoon during work hours, there are over 34,000 players logged into Skyrim on Steam alone. Mods are the reason to play Bethesda games on PC, so this will likely affect almost all of those folks. Players are expressing weariness on social media at the prospect of having to download dozens of mod updates just to get things back to normal.
Bethesda did not share a specific date for Skyrim’s update, other than noting it would happen soon. Whenever it happens, it won’t be the end of the world — Bethesda pulls something like this periodically — but it’s certain to be a headache for some. Beyond backing up saves, Bethesda fans are advising one another to disable automatic updates on Steam until their favorite mods have caught up.
