Bethesda, the developer of the post-apocalyptic action-role-playing game Fallout 4 has announced today that it won’t be able to bring mods to the PlayStation 4 version of the game (via Forbes). Mods, which are community-developed game add-ins that can enhance gameplay in various creative ways, first came to the PC version of Fallout 4 before being enabled on the Xbox One a few months ago.
While Bethesda initially announced that the PlayStation 4 version of the game would receive mods at a later time, the game developer explained today that it was forced to change its plans as Sony didn’t allow the company to offer “proper mod support” on the console.
Here is Bethesda’s full statement:
After months of discussion with Sony, we regret to say that while we have long been ready to offer mod support on PlayStation 4, Sony has informed us they will not approve user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition.
Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive. We consider this an important initiative and we hope to find other ways user mods can be available for our PlayStation audience. However, until Sony will allow us to offer proper mod support for PS4, that content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PlayStation 4 will not be available. We will provide an update if and when this situation changes.
According to Bethesda, the PlayStation 4 version of Skyrim: Special Edition won’t get mods support as well. The Xbox One version will, and Sony’s stance could well hurt its relationships with gamers and developers in the long run if the gaming community becomes convinced that the PlayStation 4 is more “closed” than its competitor. So far, mods have been really popular on Fallout 4 and especially on the Xbox One: back in June, we reported that the mod popularity on Xbox One was fifty times the number of downloads on PC. Sound off in the comments if you think Sony’s stance could hurt the PlayStation 4 in any way.
