Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft meaning Starfield will be on gamepass day 1. Gamepass already heavily restricts how you mod your games with protected folder bullshit at the OS level.
I have a feeling that it'll be really hard to use nexus with Starfield if not entirely impossible as Beth and Msoft will want to kite you through their new mod store where they take a sizeable chunk from mod makers
It's a bit tricky to wrap your head around the idea that game publishers do not like mod communities, like at all.
Like sure, mod communities give positive press and nurture a fanbase but that's the extent of the benefits publishers see.
'But they keep people interested in the game and get more people to buy a game over its lifespan'-- they don't want that. They don't want that happening.
They don't want people investing their limited time and attention spans in modding their old games. They want their attention spans nested in their current GaaS venture.
They don't want people spending their money buying their old moddable games on steam sales at a reduced price. They want them to spend their money on the $60($70)($80) new thing so their sales numbers looks good.
Then they want people finished with the old new thing and moving onto the new new thing as soon as possible. Unless it's a GaaS in which case get excited for the next season, which they want you to pay for.
I dont think thats true for Bethesda though since they only release 1 game every 5 years at best anyways. Itll be 15 years between Elder Scrolls games when the next one comes out
I'm sure (most of) Bethesda the Game Developer Studio likes modding communities. Bethesda the Publisher has been in a protracted cold war against modding communities since the 2015 paid mod fiasco.
Since then we've had modders getting poached for Paid Mods 2 (the Creation Club), everything with how Fallout 76 is run internally. Even the re-release of Skyrim Anniversary Edition was another swing at the mod community (each new big feature release temporarily breaks all the major script mods, most big expansion type mods have to make extensive patches) and an attempt to derive more profit from the Paid Mods.
Monster Hunter World is more condusive to playing modded content together with your friends than Fallout 76, and World has no official mod framework whatsoever.
EDIT: I've seen some game industry lectures of publishers saying 'yeah people spending a ton of time modding our games sounds great, but we're not getting revenue from it so it's a problem'. I'm trying to track it down, I might need to search Jim Stephanie Sterling's archives for it.
:think-about-it: but you are getting revenue from it. You suck at making video games and all your customers know it
On reflection I realize I made a big comment that basically just says I agree with you and your conspiracy.
Uhhh my point was that I think Microsoft and Bethesda (Softworks LLC) are maneuvering against mods to sell more of their own games and DLC since they do see them as competition in both attention spans and content to consume.