Bethesda finally found another way to make money out of their continued mod support. This is by way of the newly announced Creation Club, a special curation of mods and content made either internally by Bethesda Games Studios or community members- creators.
Two games are initially supported for this: Skyrim Special Edition and Fallout 4 for the PS4, PC and Xbox One. Content to be featured in the Creation Club includes new weapons, apparel, worlds, characters, creatures and gameplay tweaks.
The content in the Creation Club requires credits to be bought, available as micro-transactions.
However, Bethesda is careful enough to not call this service a way to sell paid mods. Some content are created internally (in other words, like a paid DLC) and some of them are made by external creators. While the items do cost money, creators of the mods will get their fair share.
Content in the Creation Club will undergo extended testing and polishing to ensure good quality and compatibility across all platforms with all official add-ons. Plus, mods are still available for free outside of the creation club.
This is not the first time mods were attempted to be monetised. The first one did not go well with the Steam Workshop as the murky business of mods ownership made more hassle than money, which is then discontinued shortly after.
With a more closed ecosystem, and not having them entirely build on modders’ content, maybe this could be the way to monetised mods.