On PC, it's still going at time of writing, Skyrim is the 13th most popular game on Steam. We talk about new RPGs as 'Skyrim killers' we live in the post-Skyrim era. Its success was enough to make other publishers take another look at the once-niche genre, and to send developers scrambling to live up to the new king. Skyrim is believed to have sold well in excess of 20 million copies worldwide - a culturally phenomenal success, and one which put fantasy RPGs back on the map after years of mainstream struggles. The biggest game of late 2011, Skyrim attracted millions of players - on PC alone - spending over 70 hours with it, compared to the general triple-A average of below ten. Steam Workshop changed that by making finding, installing and uninstalling mods a matter of a few mouse clicks - something you did right from the Steam client.īethesda and Valve both benefited from the arrival of Steam Workshop in early 2012, just a few months after Skyrim released. That's not to say the scene wasn't thriving, creative and populated - but it was closed off to those whose relationship to their gaming rigs was a little more casual. Prior to the launch of Steam Workshop, modding was something only hardcore PC players did, tracking down potentially dodgy files on third-party sites, fiddling with game files to install and make them work. To understand why mods on consoles are inevitable, you need to look closely at Steam Workshop it's too easy to forget how important this development was in making modding mainstream. These two developments are like twin roosters crowing to herald the dawn of the age of console modding. To understand why mods on consoles are inevitable, you need to look closely at Steam Workshop it’s too easy to forget how important this development was in making modding mainstream. We live in the future now, and although time has not yet granted us flying cars, it has given us Steam Workshop and Skyrim.

Although The PlayStation 3 version of Unreal Tournament 3 has the honour of being the first game to allow mods on consoles, that oft-forgotten experiment was an artefact of a different time.

There's been a lot of cynicism about this bold initiative, but it's unwarranted. It's happening: Fallout 4 is bringing modding to consoles, perhaps as early as May for Xbox One, with PS4 to follow shortly thereafter. Fallout 4 isn't the first game to bring mods to consoles, but it will be the first to popularise the system.

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