But now with Skyrim Remastered coming out and it being free on PC, I'm starting to wonder if Bethsoft is trying to bait people into buying it for the mods.
Of course they are.
The thing is, PC players have already had a "remastered" version of Skyrim since 2013, and some of the current builds are almost on parity with FO4 - with some give and take. Models are obviously lower quality, but the textures are far superior. There's really no reason at all for a PC player to upgrade to the Remastered version aside from the 64bit executable, but that will break 4+ years of previous mod development. Especially those that rely on SKSE, or who's authors have abandoned their work long ago. I don't see a whole lot of reason for PC players to upgrade, and apparently - neither does Bethesda.
Giving it away for free is their way of encouraging people to adopt it and build mods for it, in order to feed the console market - which is much bigger, and cannot provide their own content. The game itself is a low-effort cash-in, considering that Skyrim's engine served as the core for the development of FO4, so the hard work of porting it to new hardware and updating the effects was already done.
Bethesda desperately needs another pillar for BethesdaNet, and Skyrim will serve that purpose nicely - being both their most popular game to date - and the one with the most robust mod community. They need to have it offer as much as possible, as soon as possible, because I'm convinced that they plan to make another go at monetized modding. Either they are going to introduce banner ads and commercials, or they will winge about the cost of bandwidth and start charging a subscription fee. That's too much money for them to just leave on the table, and they WILL make another go at it - this time cutting out both mod authors and valve from the revenue stream. Setting up a walled garden is only first step.
Now, to be a bit conspiracy minded for a moment, I hear the authors of SkyUI have already stated that they refuse to port their mod to Skyrim Remaster. SkyUI is a major pillar of the mod community, and is required to make MCM work. I wouldn't be half surprised if Bethesda contacted SkyUI's author and convinced them to refuse to support Remaster and to not allow others to update it. The guy has a history of working closely with Bethesda on paid mods, and has shown that he's willing to throw the community under the bus. On Bethesda's end, they don't want mods being made which require SKSE, since script extenders are pretty much impossible on consoles. If they can knock out SkyUI, they can knock out MCM and everything that depends on them - lessening the importance of SKSE. This will gently encourage modders on Skyrim Remaster to make totally new mods - which just so happen to be more console friendly.
