The Starfield modding group responsible for October’s Community Patch prepared two years in advance for the game thanks to experience with Bethesda’s previous titles. However, it wasn’t enough, and they are now facing a backlog of bugs that are becoming increasingly difficult to fix without official modding toolkits.
Since Starfield launched two months ago in early September, players have experienced performance issues, game crashes, and so many bugs that modders have had to step in to fix them—and Oct. 24’s Community Patch aimed to remedy the bulk of these issues.
But without an official modding toolkit or support, they’re struggling to keep up with even more issues encountered in Starfield, as first reported by Eurogamer on Nov. 6.
Besthesda devs revealed a planned performance patch of their own on Nov. 1 and discussed how it would fix several issues plaguing players since launch, but fans weren’t impressed as the modding community had already fixed these.
Starfield, and some Bethesda games fans as a whole, find it ridiculous modders can fix the bugs in a shorter time period without the proper tools. In contrast, the devs still haven’t rolled out the patch and they have everything at their disposal to get it done.
But this proves, once again, that there’s an overreliance on modders to solve the dev’s problems. Even now, when players want something added or changed, the common phrase is “I hope there will be a mod for this,” because players know the chances of Bethesda adding these changes in a shorter time frame is very slim.
Mods are a lifeblood for many gaming communities, like Skyrim, which still has a large player base even though it launched in 2011, and now Starfield. However, it’s not about the Thomas the Tank Engine spaceships and Star Wars-themed mods.
Official modding toolkits are essential for modders to create mods that synergize better with games, and it makes changing the game’s code to fix performance issues and bugs or to add fun pop culture references much more effortless. Without it, modding a game is time-consuming and difficult, and as Starfield doesn’t yet have an official modding toolkit modders are finding it difficult to fix the neverending list of bugs in Starfield.
Hopefully, Bethesda will release an official modding toolkit soon because it means mods can keep fixing Starfield’s bugs, just more quickly and with less of a struggle.
