Starfield official mod tools will arrive next year, Todd Howard confirms

Starfield director Todd Howard says that Bethesda's sci-fi RPG was «intentionally» designed to be played for a long time and that he expects to still be working to update the game for the next five years.

Todd Howard has shared a surprising insight about Starfield.

You may have heard about a little space game called Starfield, the gravitational pull from which risks swallowing all games discourse for months and possibly years to come. Perhaps that's no surprise for a game that's been in development and hyped for as long as any title that I can remember (well, ones that have shipped anyway) but it's easy to forget now the thing's in our hands that it was subject to multiple delays along the way.

Starfield is getting official mod support in 2024, game director Todd Howard confirmed in an interview. Since the expansive space RPG's debut in early access, thousands of unofficial mods have been made available online, ranging from ones that enable Nvidia's DLSS upscaling system to making the inventory more compact and user-friendly. However, official modding tools make it easy to add fresh, custom content such as new planets and story quests, essentially opening the playing field for more experimentation. This has been the custom for Bethesda games at launch, where the modding community has been deeply involved with eliminating bugs or enhancing the experience, thanks to a deep understanding of the engine.

Bethesda has confirmed plans to introduce official mod support for Starfield in 2024.

There are a ton of mods available for Starfield already, adding everything from stormtroopers to support for Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling system. By the standards of most games, this number of mods would be considered a deluge. But Starfield is a Bethesda Game Studios game, which means it’s more like the calm before the storm.

Starfield was quickly one of the biggest and most anticipated video game titles launching this year. Fans eagerly counted down the days until Bethesda was ready to release their brand new RPG into the marketplace. However, now that the game is finally here, some of you might wonder when that official mod support will make its way out. Mods have been one of the reasons some games continue to see plenty of active players today. Likewise, Bethesda is no stranger to allowing mods and embracing community creations.

Starfield is getting official mod support in 2024 according to Bethesda development chief Todd Howard.

In an interview with Famitsu, Starfield lead and Bethesda frontman Todd Howard stated that the game's mod support «will be available next year» (obtained via machine translation), which likely refers to Starfield's equivalent to the Creation Kit modding tools for Skyrim and Fallout 4.

Bethesda games have courted modders for decades at this point and the developer’s space epic, Starfield, is no different. But despite already receiving several handy mods just a week after launch, the game won’t be receiving official mod support until next year. 

While it’s certainly true that Starfield already has more mods than most games ever receive during their entire lifetime, including the hotly anticipated Script Extender thingamajig, it doesn’t take an eagle’s eye to notice that the vast majority of them are still relatively limited in scope. That’s for good reason, too, as Starfield is currently missing a crucial feature that all Bethesda Game Studios RPGS eventually receive: Creation Kit support. Until Creation Kit 2 – built specifically for Starfield‘s Creation Engine 2 – comes out, modders won’t be able to easily add new weapons, customizations, and other assorted goodies into the game, but the good news is that it’s bound to happen relatively soon!

With Starfield now out, modders are already beginning to use the tools that they have at their disposal to improve and change the massive sci-fi RPG in a number of ways. And of course, this being a Bethesda RPG, there’s plenty of excitement surrounding what will be possible once the game’s full modding toolset is at the disposal of the community.