Starfield Will Get Full Modding Tools in 2024

It's not easy to balance space combat without seriously dumbing down the enemies, Todd Howard says.

Starfield is getting support for Nvidia DLSS in a future update. In a blog post, Bethesda claimed that it will address some of the highly-requested features and make quality-of-life improvements through a series of regular updates. These include an in-game FOV slider, which so far, players have been adjusting by editing a .ini text file, alongside brightness and contrast controls, and an HDR calibration menu. But before that, the developer has dropped a small hotfix today, to help iron out any ‘top blocker bugs' that are interfering with the general experience in the beloved space RPG. Dubbed version 1.7.29, the hotfix brings improvements to Starfield's performance on the Xbox Series S/X by reducing crashes. It also fixes some quest-ending bugs.

Starfield's jogging speed can appear to be a little fast but thankfully if you're finding it to be an issue a few players have already created some mods to help. 

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.

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

Starfield game director Todd Howard has confirmed that the game's official mod tools will be released next year. 

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!

Bethesda Game Studios RPG have a tendency to be mind-bogglingly massive experiences even at launch, and continue to only grow in size with significant post-launch support in the form of various updates and expansions. The recently-released Starfield very much seems to be following that same trajectory- but though we know Bethesda will release DLC for the sci-fi RPG, when exactly can we expect that DLC?

Starfield has now surpassed the Steam concurrency peak of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which registered 287K concurrent users when it launched twelve years ago, entering Steam's all-time Top 30. It is not the highest concurrency peak of a Bethesda Game Studios title on Steam; Fallout 4 reached a peak of 472K users when it launched eight years ago. However, it was a given that a meaningful portion of players would opt to access the game via the Microsoft Store and the Game Pass subscription service, as per Microsoft's policy.