Yeah but what expectation could they have had that they’d need to communicate with Bethesda in the first place? The game’s been “complete” for several years at this point, and IIRC Skyrim Special Edition (the Skyrim version of what happened here) was both announced in advance and released as a separate game, so mods that weren’t getting updates could still function. In light of that, it seems reasonable for the developer to expect advance warning at least in the form of a press release prior to the update being made available. Should they have reached out every week asking whether Bethesda had any plans to update a 10-year-old game?
In light of that, it seems reasonable for the developer to expect advance warning at least in the form of a press release prior to the update being made available.
The modder said it themselves. It will take time for them to check the 4 years of work to see if it still function. At this point, no matter when Bethesda drop the update, they will complaint that it break their mod. This has been going on since the launch of FO4 where every time bethesda update the game, it break the mod, people complain about it, some straight out announce they won’t fix it until the final update. It’s nothing new.
IMO the solution is to enable easier manual versioning management. Instead of auto updating everything, just add an update button when there’s an update available, include a rollback option, and offer downloads for popular versions instead of just the latest.
Back in the StarCraft modding days, some tools required specific versions of the game to function. The modding community figured out how to work around that by hosting the patches that got to the desired version and giving instructions (maybe even tools) for users to manage using both a specific version for mods and the latest version to play online.
The modding community was doing its own thing and didn’t expect Blizzard to adjust the way they were doing anything to make things easier. I can’t believe the sense of entitlement I’m seeing all over the place regarding this.
These broken mods were using a third party tool that reverse engineered the game’s binary to do things their modding API didn’t expose. If they wanted to be dicks about it, they might have been able to shut it down as a tos violation or tried to deliberately block it some other way. All they did was update the code, which then generates a new binary and changes all of the addresses and offsets that the tool needs to use.
Honestly the best thing they can do is make for easy game version rollbacks on PC platforms. Kerbal Space Program uses the Steam Betas feature to have a ton of different game versions easily available to download for example. If it were EA I’d also be saying to give the option to defer game updates in their shitty launcher but I’ve given up on hoping EA ever does something positive for its userbase
There’s actually a comment to the effect that they had zero communication with Bethesda, but still wish they had been given earlier notice.
That’s the kicker lol. They didn’t communicate with Bethesda but expect Bethesda to communicate with them.
Yeah but what expectation could they have had that they’d need to communicate with Bethesda in the first place? The game’s been “complete” for several years at this point, and IIRC Skyrim Special Edition (the Skyrim version of what happened here) was both announced in advance and released as a separate game, so mods that weren’t getting updates could still function. In light of that, it seems reasonable for the developer to expect advance warning at least in the form of a press release prior to the update being made available. Should they have reached out every week asking whether Bethesda had any plans to update a 10-year-old game?
They did…
The modder said it themselves. It will take time for them to check the 4 years of work to see if it still function. At this point, no matter when Bethesda drop the update, they will complaint that it break their mod. This has been going on since the launch of FO4 where every time bethesda update the game, it break the mod, people complain about it, some straight out announce they won’t fix it until the final update. It’s nothing new.
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Removed by mod
How about just not “updating” a finished game?
Removed by mod
IMO the solution is to enable easier manual versioning management. Instead of auto updating everything, just add an update button when there’s an update available, include a rollback option, and offer downloads for popular versions instead of just the latest.
Back in the StarCraft modding days, some tools required specific versions of the game to function. The modding community figured out how to work around that by hosting the patches that got to the desired version and giving instructions (maybe even tools) for users to manage using both a specific version for mods and the latest version to play online.
The modding community was doing its own thing and didn’t expect Blizzard to adjust the way they were doing anything to make things easier. I can’t believe the sense of entitlement I’m seeing all over the place regarding this.
These broken mods were using a third party tool that reverse engineered the game’s binary to do things their modding API didn’t expose. If they wanted to be dicks about it, they might have been able to shut it down as a tos violation or tried to deliberately block it some other way. All they did was update the code, which then generates a new binary and changes all of the addresses and offsets that the tool needs to use.
Honestly the best thing they can do is make for easy game version rollbacks on PC platforms. Kerbal Space Program uses the Steam Betas feature to have a ton of different game versions easily available to download for example. If it were EA I’d also be saying to give the option to defer game updates in their shitty launcher but I’ve given up on hoping EA ever does something positive for its userbase
It wouldn’t be the first time, the SKSE team for Skyrim was in contact with Bethesda before Special Edition came out.