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Bethesda was under no obligation to talk to these mod devs beforehand. But it sure makes them look bad. As a recent comparable, Concerned Ape was open and communicative with all the mod devs before releasing his latest patch for Stardew Valley, a game that is just about as old as Fallout 4.
Bethesda has become a literal laughingstock at this point in time and it's just funny to point at them every time they rack up another L.
They had no obligation, but there was no reason they couldn't take the minimal effort and put out a blog post saying that the update would break mods. The modding scene is the only thing keeping Bethesda's games relevant (except New Vegas, but that's not really Bethesda's achievement).
The modding scene is the only thing keeping Bethesda’s games relevant
The recent Fallout series is probably doing a good job.
Every single update breaks mods that rely on a script extender because it changes the game's binary.
Bethesda communicated beforehand for script extender Skyrim. Gave them an NDAA and allowed them to update the extender before the anniversary update release.
Don’t know why they didn’t do the same for Fallout
Fallout London is whinging but the real loser is the Fallout 4 Script Extender mod, upon which so many other mods relied.
Fallout London release or no, this has broken a massive number of mods for Fallout 4 that relied on the Script Extender.
That's actually the bigger story here, that Bethesda declined to communicate with the modders who made the backbone of a lot of other mods.
From the Fallout 4 Script Extender home page:
The 2024-04-25 Fallout 4 update (1.10.980 and later) has broken F4SE and the rest of the native code modding scene similarly to Skyrim's "Anniversary Edition" patch. I am working on an update and cannot currently offer a timeline for its availability, nor whether there will be any critical technical issues that would block an update. Do not email with questions.
Fixing the script extender itself won't take that long as it doesn't need to hook that many functions (although depending on how much free time people have and whether there are any surprises, it could still take longer than most people expect). Fixing all the mods that depend on it will take much longer, as between them, they hook lots more functions than the script extender itself, and with this update, it's not just a case of most functions being the same, but at a slightly different address (as was typical with creation club updates, which tools could help with), but instead lots of functions have changed slightly due to using an updated compiler, and lots of functions have been inlined differently (so instead of just existing once, they get copied into every function that uses them, and then optimised differently in each place based on the surrounding code).
The solution that Skyrim players came up with was to downgrade to older versions. For example, Skyrim SE mods are all permanently version 1.5.97 supported. This can be done manually via the Download Depot commands in the Steam Console which is accessed by typing steam://open/console into the Windows "Run" prompt, or alternatively using a Downgrade Patcher mod which ironically also has to be updated for every new version.
So what I'm understanding from reading everyone's outrage and input on this, is that Fallout London may or may not come out because of this, but more importantly, just wait a little while after the update to try out mods, just like every other Bethesda game update?
Little while could be a long while for some mods and maybe never for others. I wouldn't be surprised if some mod developers don't go back and fix it if they had moved on to other projects. These mods will be years old and anything that uses the script extender will have advanced features to it so they're not a 3 minute quest mod using only existing assets found in the game itself.
I made a tutorial on reverting to 1.5.97 Skyrim SE like a month ago because it breaks again with every new update, and they STILL update it pretty frequently.
Nobody liked that.
They did this to Skyrim too. Breaking mods in decade old games is ridiculous
Every single time this happens, people act like its the first time. Game updates -> Script Extender breaks -> Mods reliant on it break too. Every. Single. Time.
but this is a game that basically lives and dies by its mods, and this is an update that (arguably) changed nothing anyone who is still playing the game cares about after years of stability. why fix what isn't broken?
For a company that relies 100% on modders for their games, you'd think they'd have an actual modding API built into their games by now.
There's a pretty extensive API, capable of more than most games that advertise modding support, but it can't do literally everything anyone could think of, so people reverse engineer the game engine to make it possible to do even more things (hence it being called a script extender rather than the modding API). It's the mod reliant on reverse engineering the executable that break, not the ones using the modding API.
"This thing they announced for last year, then pushed back to this year and released to coincide with a massively hyped TV show was a complete surprise to us." Is that really FO:London's stance? I mean, I feel for them that it sucks, but to call it a surprise feels straight up disingenuous.
How do you prepare for an update when Bethesda don't tell you what is changing? It says in the article they had literally no correspondence from Bethesda until the update dropped, so the only thing they could do was keep developing and hope not too much broke in the process.
That being said, from what I understand is that the script extender broke, so they're just waiting for an undefined time until that gets fixed for the latest update.
I'll have to watch the BBC interview. The way the article is worded makes it sounds like they've been in communication with Bethesda while creating Fallout London.
There's actually a comment to the effect that they had zero communication with Bethesda, but still wish they had been given earlier notice.
It was surreal watching BBC report on a game mod. I saw the thumbnail 'Fallout London Delay' with the BBC logo and thought there was a terrorist attack or something.
I remember hearing about the current-gen upgrade a long time ago. Why is this a surprise?
Why do they need to release for the newest version? If they were going to release soon anyways, just release for the old version of Fallout.
I'm picturing the number of messages they'd receive the day the update hit. People suck. Most will understand that they need to hold off on updating if they want to play the mod, some will seek support when it breaks. Some of those will say "that makes sense" and disappointedly wait for the mod to update, some of those will get angry. I certainly wouldn't want an inevitable flood of angry emails a few days after the big release.
I made sure to download my copy of FO4 from GOG since it hasnt updated yet. Shame London won't release on GOG (who will be hosting it) still while they work on fixing it for the new version.