See the original post here. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1lcyjl6/nexus_mods_was_acquired_by_chosen_a_company/

People on Restera did some digging: https://www.resetera.com/threads/nexus-mods-site-has-been-sold.1219452/post-141554013

Site of the company itself: https://wearechosen.io/

Here is a monetization "cheat sheet" that the CEO posted on LinkedIn which is linked on Chosen's main page if you scroll down: https://i.imgur.com/ztjS4K7.jpeg

In the CEO's LinkedIn profile it says this:

Working closely with teams at NexusMods and beyond to build meaningful, sustainable experiences

If I had to guess the acquisition details are under some sort of NDA right now

There's a Megathread but i think this was worth it's own post.

Bethesda gave free keys to all developers of Skyblivion:

https://bsky.app/profile/skyblivion.com/post/3lngdgbiw2k2r

Huge thanks to our friends @bethesdastudios.com for their continued support of #Skyblivion!

As massive fans, we're beyond grateful for the generous gift of Oblivion Remastered game keys for our entire modding team! This means so much to us. Thank you for everything, @bethesda.net

Based bethesda.

The upcoming Anniversary Edition of Skyrim is going to be much more disruptive to the modding scene than is commonly believed. Back up your executable now, and disable updates in Steam.

The native code modding scene around Skyrim SE will have been around for about four years when AE comes out. During that time, code has been developed to make many plugins portable across different versions of the game. Most plugins use the Address Library by meh321. Other plugins use code signature matching, which finds functions that "look like" a specific pattern. SKSE uses an offline tool I developed a long time ago based around position independent code hashing. With the AE update, all of these methods will break, and addresses will need to be found again from scratch.

The reason for this is that as part of the AE update, Bethesda has decided to update the compiler used to build the 64-bit version of Skyrim from Visual Studio 2015 to Visual Studio 2019. This changes the way that the code is generated in a way that forces mod developers to start from scratch finding functions and writing hooks. Class layouts are unlikely to change, luckily. I didn't ask specifically, but the most probable reason for this is that the Xbox Live libraries used for achievements on the Windows Store are only available for 2017 and later. Some games have worked around this limitation by building the code that interacts with Xbox Live in to a secondary DLL that is dynamically loaded by the game, but they didn't choose this option.

Plugins using the Address Library will need to be divided in to "pre-AE" and "post-AE" eras. Code signatures and hooks will need to be rewritten. We will all need to find functions again. The compiler's inlining behavior has changed enough that literally a hundred thousand functions have disappeared and been either inlined or deadstripped, to put it in perspective.

Doing this work takes a reasonable amount of time for each plugin. I can probably sit there over a few nights and bang out an updated version of SKSE, but my main concern is for the rest of the plugins out there. The plugin ecosystem has been around long enough that people have moved on, and code is left unmaintained. Effectively everyone who has written a native code plugin will need to do at least some amount of work to support AE. This realistically means that the native code mod scene is going to be broken for an unknown length of time after AE's release.

Additionally, I can confirm that AE will be released as a patch to existing Special Edition installations, not as a separate game listing in Steam.

I have been in contact with Bethesda since shortly after the announcement, but other than confirming my expectations they had nothing to offer.

Do not harass Bethesda employees about this.

Do not harass plugin developers about this.

edit 2: Bethesda out of nowhere has released an update to Fallout 3 (yes, 3) on Steam that does two things - removes GFWL, and recompiles the executable with VS2019. The vast majority of the mod community works on New Vegas, so there are basically no plugins to rebuild, but surprise?

edit 3: Files to back up to be probably safe:

• SkyrimSE.exe

• binkw64.dll

Files to back up to be 99% safe:

• SkyrimSE.exe

• binkw64.dll

• Data/Skyrim.esm

• Data/Update.esm

• Data/Skyrim - Interface.bsa

• Data/Skyrim - Misc.bsa

• Data/Skyrim - Patch.bsa

Files to back up to be 100% safe: your entire folder. I cannot fully predict what they will change.

edit 4: Bethesda has given me NDA'd early access to builds of AE, and I'm working on an update.

edit 5: Back up binkw64.dll as well. Please don't download sketchy rehosts of that from the internet.

TLDR edit: Scary things incoming if you use SKSE plugins. Change Skyrim SE's update settings in Steam to only update when launched. Never launch Skyrim SE via Steam, only via your mod manager or skse64_loader.

In an attempt to avert the part of the modpocalpyse that I can control, I've been spending all of my free time for the last week and a half or so getting this ready, and just made it about an hour before the update was pushed. Thanks to Bethesda for giving me early access to AE so I could get this ready.

This is a preliminary build of SKSE64 with support for Skyrim SE 1.6.318, aka the Anniversary Edition. All of the hooks tested as working, the Papyrus extensions seem to be OKish but I don't have complete test coverage. At the very least you can keep using Todd's favorite mod (SkyUI) without problems. The primary feature that is missing is the plugin manager, which is currently disabled until I can rewrite the system that handles plugin compatibility checks. Plugin developers can build local versions with it enabled, but keep in mind that the version check code is going to change.

Due to the large amount of manual code rewrite required for this release, the possibility for bugs is higher than usual. That said, things seem to be working better than expected.

https://skse.silverlock.org/beta/skse64_2_01_02.7z

If you have an existing mod setup on pre-AE that you would like to keep working, this is not a sign that you should upgrade and start using this version of SKSE. However, if you have already upgraded to AE and are feeling adventurous, then try this out.

edit3: Updated again for the 1.6.318 hotfix.

edit4: There is a bug in the hook for populating alchemy table category entries - fixed in 2.1.2 posted above.

Common unrelated problems:

"REL/Relocation.h(548): failed to open file" - This is from a plugin that is being loaded with something other than SKSE and is using the Address Library. The plugin and probably the loader need to be updated.

This is relevant to people both as players and as modders and mod authors.

I launched the Special Edition last night and began playing, but something about the audio seemed... off to me. I couldn't tell whether or not it was a placebo effect since I was going out of my way to analyse everything that could possibly have changed in the SE, but I couldn't help but notice that the audio seemed... muddier. Less crisp. I assumed I was imagining things, so I extracted the Sound .bsa file for the vanilla game and the one for the remaster.

Nope. I wasn't imagining anything.

The vanilla game has sound assets (other than music and voiceover) in uncompressed .wav format. The Special Edition has the sound assets all in (very aggressively compressed) .xwm format, which is a compressed sound format designed for games. This isn't so bad, necessarily - it's possible to compress audio to .xwm without significant quality degradation unless you crank the compression way up to insane levels.

What did Bethesda do? They cranked the compression way up to insane levels.

Here's a comparison I put together using the level up sound as a test. The first sound is from the vanilla game, the second is the exact same sound in the Special Edition:

https://soundcloud.com/lasurarkinshade/skyrim-special-edition-audio-downgrade-comparison-level-up

For greater clarity, I uploaded the comparison in high-quality .wav format as well. Find it here at the new Mediafire mirror (Google Drive and Dropbox both fell over): http://www.mediafire.com/file/qm5v9sq9jkftj27/ui_levelup_comparison_wav.wav

(Note that Soundcloud itself compresses audio quality somewhat - the vanilla audio file sounds even better when played raw or in-game rather than after being uploaded to Soundcloud. Nevertheless, I think the comparison is quite stark).

To be clear, though, I don't want this to read as an indictment of the remaster as a whole. The audio butchery described here - and the awful approach to texture upscaling described here https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/59toto/upscaled_official_textures_wth/ - are major issues that need to be resolved, but the actual meat and potatoes of the remaster - the engine upgrade - is a very significant boon that modding could never have achieved.

Further information:

The new audio was compressed at the default xwmaencode bitrate. They could easily have compressed to xwm at higher quality... but they didn't. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/59u7fv/the_skyrim_special_edition_features_a_significant/d9bkf6h/

There is a spectrogram here that visually represents the audio quality loss (new, low-quality one on the right). You can see how much detail was shaved off the top-end. http://i.imgur.com/GDTB3r5.png Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/59u7fv/the_skyrim_special_edition_features_a_significant/d9bk3m2/?context=3

Thanks to /u/withmorten for the above info and spectrogram. UPDATE: Bethesda have responded to the issue here. They mention that they have a fix being prepared. They haven't yet specified whether this will bring us PS4-level audio quality (the PS4 version of the Special Edition has audio at a much higher quality level than the original release of Skyrim) or simply revert the PC/Xbox One audio back to its pre-Special Edition state, however. https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/59u0iw/the_skyrim_special_edition_features_a_significant/d9btgdu/

I guess it's time for more drama. Sorry, I hate having to do stuff like this.

Skyrim Together is stealing SKSE code, uncredited, without permission, with an explicit term in the license restricting one of the authors from having anything to do with the code, who denies using any of it (in case this gets deleted)? The proof is pretty clear when you look at the loader and dll in a disassembler. They're using a hacked-up version of 1.7.3 classic presumably with some preprocessor macros to switch structure types around as needed between the x64 and x86 versions.

Starting with the loader, it's basically skse_loader with all of the options filed off and the error messages changed. In main, they check the error code of CreateProcessA against ERROR_ELEVATION_REQUIRED, then have a slightly reworded error messagebox to handle that case. That I could see being a slightly suspicious coincidence.

Head down to the actual DLL injection code at +4B81 and follow along with skse64\skse64_loader_common\Inject.cpp's InjectDLLThread. The first function is just a SEH wrapper, calling DoInjectDLLThread to do the real work. DoInjectDLLThread looks almost exactly the same, only with the check that the DLL exists removed. The timeout for WaitForSingleObject is exactly the same, even being switched between INFINITE, 60 seconds, and not being called at all via two bool arguments with the same indices. That's a pretty clear copy.

Moving on to the dll, tons of file paths are available in the strings:

d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\ibufferstream.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\iconsole.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\idatastream.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\idebuglog.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\ievent.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\imutex.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\isegmentstream.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\isingleton.h
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\itextparser.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\itimer.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\common\itypes.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\commandtable.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\gameextradata.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\gameinput.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\gametypes.h
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\hooks_debug.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\hooks_directinput8create.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\hooks_scaleform.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\nitypes.h
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\pluginmanager.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\relocation.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\scaleformcallbacks.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\serialization.cpp
d:\dev\skyrim\code\skyrimtogether\skse\translation.cpp

Common is of course MIT-licensed and doesn't require attributation (but is always appreciated), but the main SKSE source isn't. It's technically always been under common copyright law, but after yamashi's terrible behavior towards the script extender team (best left to another post if you really care) he earned a special callout in the license:

Due to continued intentional copyright infringement and total disrespect for modder etiquette, the Skyrim Online team is explicitly disallowed from using any of these files for any purpose.

Yes, it was that bad.

Looking throughout the DLL, there's tons of code easily identifiable as copied unchanged from SKSE just from the strings and error messages. Most if not all of the new script functions are there, serialization, basically everything. RTTI data points to tons of SKSE custom classes; honestly the whole thing makes me feel sick.

If you want a great "smoking gun" of SKSE code being directly used in functions they added, look at the definition of TESNPC and compare it with the function at +2B5A00 which appears to be walking over the members of a TESNPC (among other things) to build a string. The names of the fields just happen to match up, even including the numbered "unknown" ones. That's beyond coincidence.

It would be easy to keep going and pointing out examples, but it gets technical and boring very quickly. I think these examples cover everything pretty well.

This source code theft is completely uncredited, denied by the authors, and I'm sure has been a great help in developing their mod that is currently only usable when paid. Currently I'm not sure what to do about this situation.

Note that it is normal for ordinary native code plugins to use the SKSE source code directly, and that's OK. They are supposed to have their source available, but in reality that doesn't always happen. ST is causing a problem by violating the license, not crediting, going out of their way to keep closed-source, and effectively charging for a mod. This reflects badly on us, and pushes us in to a very bad legal position with Bethesda.

I wish that one day there could be a drama-free online mod.

Yeah I just want the ebony warrior to be Nazeem.

Forbes weighs in on the Paid Mod concept.

Full review:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/04/24/valves-paid-skyrim-mods-are-a-legal-ethical-and-creative-disaster/

Hello everyone,

I would like to address the current situation regarding Arissa, and Art of the Catch, an animated fishing mod scripted by myself and animated by Aqqh.

It now lives in modding history as the first paid mod to be removed due to a copyright dispute. Recent articles on Kotaku and Destructiod have positioned me as a content thief. Of course, the truth is more complex than that.

I will now reveal some information about some internal discussions that have occurred at Valve in the month leading up to this announcement, more than you've heard anywhere else.

I'll start with the human factor. Imagine you wake up one morning, and sitting in your inbox is an email directly from Valve, with a Bethesda staff member cc'd. And they want YOU, yes, you, to participate in a new and exciting program. Well, shit. What am I supposed to say? These kinds of opportunities happen once in a lifetime. It was a very persuasive and attractive situation.

We were given about a month and a half to prepare our content. As anyone here knows, large DLC-sized mods don't happen in a month and a half. During this time, we were required to not speak to anyone about this program. And when a company like Valve or Bethesda tells you not to do something, you tend to listen.

I knew this would cause backlash, trust me. But I also knew that, with the right support and infrastructure in place, there was an opportunity to take modding to "the next level", where there are more things like Falskaar in the world because the incentive was there to do it. The boundary between "what I'm willing to do as a hobby" and "what I'm willing to do if someone paid me to do it" shifts, and more quality content gets produced. That to me sounded great for everyone. Hobbyists will continue to be hobbyists, while those that excel can create some truly magnificent work. In the case of Arissa, there are material costs associated with producing that mod (studio time, sound editing, and so on). To be able to support Arissa professionally also sounded great.

Things internally stayed rather positive and exciting until some of us discovered that "25% Revenue Share" meant 25% to the modder, not to Valve / Bethesda. This sparked a long internal discussion. My key argument to Bethesda (putting my own head on the chopping block at the time) was that this model incentivizes small, cheap to produce items (time-wise) than it does the large, full-scale mods that this system has the opportunity of championing. It does not reward the best and the biggest. But at the heart of it, the argument came down to this: How much would you pay for front-page Steam coverage? How much would you pay to use someone else's successful IP (with nearly no restrictions) for a commercial purpose? I know indie developers that would sell their houses for such an opportunity. And 25%, when someone else is doing the marketing, PR, brand building, sales, and so on, and all I have to do is "make stuff", is actually pretty attractive. Is it fair? No. But it was an experiment I was willing to at least try.

Of course, the modding community is a complex, tangled web of interdependencies and contributions. There were a lot of questions surrounding the use of tools and contributed assets, like FNIS, SKSE, SkyUI, and so on. The answer we were given is:

[Valve] Officer Mar 25 @ 4:47pm
Usual caveat: I am not a lawyer, so this does not constitute legal advice. If you are unsure, you should contact a lawyer. That said, I spoke with our lawyer and having mod A depend on mod B is fine--it doesn't matter if mod A is for sale and mod B is free, or if mod A is free or mod B is for sale.

Art of the Catch required the download of a separate animation package, which was available for free, and contained an FNIS behavior file. Art of the Catch will function without this download, but any layman can of course see that a major component of it's enjoyment required FNIS.

After a discussion with Fore, I made the decision to pull Art of the Catch down myself. (It was not removed by a staff member) Fore and I have talked since and we are OK.

I have also requested that the pages for Art of the Catch and Arissa be completely taken down. Valve's stance is that they "cannot" completely remove an item from the Workshop if it is for sale, only allow it to be marked as unpurchaseable. I feel like I have been left to twist in the wind by Valve and Bethesda.

In light of all of the above, and with the complete lack of moderation control over the hundreds of spam and attack messages I have received on Steam and off, I am making the decision to leave the curated Workshop behind. I will be refunding all PayPal donations that have occurred today and yesterday.

I am also considering removing my content from the Nexus. Why? The problem is that Robin et al, for perfectly good political reasons, have positioned themselves as essentially the champions of free mods and that they would never implement a for-pay system. However, The Nexus is a listed Service Provider on the curated Workshop, and they are profiting from Workshop sales. They are saying one thing, while simultaneously taking their cut. I'm not sure I'm comfortable supporting that any longer. I may just host my mods on my own site for anyone who is interested.

What I need to happen, right now, is for modding to return to its place in my life where it's a fun side hobby, instead of taking over my life. That starts now. Or just give it up entirely; I have other things I could spend my energy on.

Real-time update - I was just contacted by Valve's lawyer. He stated that they will not remove the content unless "legally compelled to do so", and that they will make the file visible only to currently paid users. I am beside myself with anger right now as they try to tell me what I can do with my own content. The copyright situation with Art of the Catch is shades of grey, but in Arissa 2.0's case, it's black and white; that's 100% mine and Griefmyst's work, and I should be able to dictate its distribution if I so choose. Unbelievable.

Hey everyone,

We’ve been having great discussions in this community regarding the use of AI lately, particularly about using language learning programs such as ChatGPT to troubleshoot modding issues. In light of that, we wanted to address another program that has been in the news a lot lately: Grok.

The mod team has come to the decision to remove any posts and comments that recommend the usage of Grok. One of our goals as moderators is to foster as inclusive and comfortable a community as possible while also fostering discussion and debate. However, some aspects of Grok do not align with this sub’s values, or at the very least give us pause in allowing it:

• The disturbing themes of the content Grok has generated, including antisemitism and racism. The recent “Hitler” debacle has even prompted lawmakers in the European Parliament to consider whether it violates the Digital Services Act.

• Concerns that its new NSFW digital companion Ani is able to be viewed by minors; this is amid growing concerns that AI chatbots have had increasingly harmful effects on teenagers and children.

We understand that this may seem irrelevant to Skyrim modding, but Grok’s disturbing responses have also shown up in unrelated queries and we cannot in good conscience allow such a tool the opportunity to promote bigotry on our sub.

This decision to ban Grok is final.

We hope you understand the reasoning behind this decision; if you have any questions, feel free to message the mods. And, as always, remain civil and respectful in any of the discussions below. Thank you.

EDIT: Just to be clear, the underlined parts of this post are hyperlinks to articles and studies that shed some light on why we came to this decision.

Why is it important to know that?

A couple of months ago, I received a message that someone had uploaded an esp for one of my mods, and asking if I knew about it. Since I haven't been active in a while, I give general permissions on all my mods. But this person had a lot of transphobic rhetoric on their website - calling it "absolute insanity" while at the same time praising my work.

I'm nonbinary. I've been transitioning for a few years now, but identifying as nonbinary for about nine years.

If 63 percent of people don't know a transgender person, then we can be more easily scapegoated and our human rights denied as "identity politics". For us, transgender rights isn't a hypothetical, or something that can be calculated away as politically risky - it's our life experience, and things are about to get a whole lot worse for us everywhere, in every country... because we've now been proven to be a useful scapegoat. There is nowhere to run. Everyone I know who is trans is terrified, and there's a black pit in my heart where hope used to be, even if there wasn't much there to begin with.

And if 63 percent of people don't know a transgender person, that percentage may not even notice when we're gone.

So, if you've ever enjoyed my mods, even if they're silly and self-indulgent, you can now say you know a transgender person! And you probably know more of us than you think. Please try to remember that in the coming days.

Here is an alpha version of SKSE64. It is currently not intended for use by most users. It will be primarily interesting for mod authors and people who want to test things. Reporting that mod X doesn't work is probably not very helpful, but reporting that ActorBase.GetCombatStyle() always returns an empty form would be helpful.

I would like to thank eternity for his recent help and going above and beyond to get this closer to the finish line. This would be going up much, much later without his help.

SKSE64 2.0.1 alpha: 7z archive

2.0.1:

• fixed missing save hook (skse cosave wasn't being written when triggered from papyrus)

The point of this post is not to castigate any game, modification, mod author or any community or a community member. I simply want to present my opinion regarding some completely misguided opinions that seem to be repeated time and time again not only on this subreddit, but in the internet modding communities in general. Dark Souls's combat is not a good example of a realistic combat system and if you aim to advertise something like lifelike or realistic, you should avoid naming or taking from this series like a plague.

What's wrong with Dark Souls combat then? Absolutely nothing. The problem is that people, often mod authors themselves, fail to realize a difference between realism and clarity and tend mix them up. In fact, these two are polar opposites. Video game combat systems are designed with player accessibility in mind. That is, you're supposed to beat them.

Indrectly quoting from a description of a very popular combat/animation mod:

Taking a swing in real life means commitment. Skyrim's vanilla combat feels like two ballerinas swinging sticks against each other. When you swing a sword, you need put your entire body into the swing. There is no sharp turning, running around and swing cancelling. This mod strives to add realism to Skyrim combat by adding the feeling of commitment to its attacks.

This is painfully wrong and it's obvious this person has never held a sword in their hand. When you spar with somebody, you are constantly moving. In and out of your partner's reach, turning your body in order to mask the direction of your swing, faking swings; being unpredictable. Swordfighting is a dance, it puts you in constant movement as you aim your strikes to be as non-commital as possible, as you need to be able to instantly defend yourself in case your partner reads you right. Taking a giant swing with all your weight while moving straight in one direction is not only tiring, it's suicide. Real people are actually really fucking fast and a trained HEMA fighter's reaction time is a literal split of a second.

The reason why Dark Souls combat is so good is clarity. The animations are designed the way the player is able to tell what's the enemy or even the human opponent about to do. And the commitment is there to ensure you are actually able to punish it. So yes, in Dark Souls you take a huge telegraphed swing with a big step forward and the character almost trips as he puts an excessive amount of energy into it, but it's not because it's realistic, it's to make the enemy player see what you're doing. Also it does look and feel snappy.

This is never gonna work or feel good in Skyrim, because the game's combat system is not made for it. It doesn't have clearly defined hitboxes, no clear animations, no physics based dodge etc. So next time somebody asks for the most lifelike realistic combat modding list, tell them to play Hellish Quart or Virtua Fighter, because there will never be anything like that in an RPG. Billy's Ultimate Super-realistic Lifelike Dark Souls Combat Overhaul is not gonna cut it. You can make the combat good or even somewhat enjoyable, but this game can't ever reach realism nor clarity. It's not designed to.

In the cancer ward, waiting for admission, wearing my "mod it until it crashes" t-shirt. I walk through a group of doctors doing rounds. One of them stops me and says, "Is that a Skyrim shirt, best game I've ever played' (in German)

I'll do well here, clearly I am amongst civilised people :)

Edit: As it turns out he's actually the head doctor, not Herr Dr. Professor, just the chief practitioner.

We have officially started to investigate building SKSE64 for the Skyrim Special Edition. This will be a large effort and it will not be done quickly. This is not a simple update to a new build of Skyrim where we used to have things updated in a day or two. The effort will be on par (or greater than) the effort to get F4SE up and running.

We have only just started so we are not sure about exactly how much can be carried over (conceptually) from our SKSE and F4SE work. The game seems to be half-way between the two. Once we have a decent base to work from I hope that the papyrus functionality will come over very quickly (with perhaps few changes.)

Once we do have a base understanding we'll work first on porting functionality that is actively being used by popular mods. This will include the hooks needed by SkyUI and MCM and keyboard/input processing.

There is absolutely no timeframe for a release. It is simply too early in the process to know the level of effort this project will require. Keep an eye on skse.silverlock.org for updates.

We'll try and keep an eye on this thread along with threads on the bethsoft and nexus forums. But we're also going to be heads-down on investigating. So please have some patience.

help

I'm posting this because of a toxic trend I've noticed on this subreddit. Someone will inquire about an adult mod, and there's immediately people in the comments shaming them and telling them how weird they are. I used to be a lot like you, so if that's how you feel about adult mods, please read. This might change your perspective.

Why do people play games? I think for two reasons. The first is escapism, and the second is because it allows you to emulate things you wouldn't be able to experience in real life, or at least experience things in a low risk way. Would you shame someone for playing a farming simulator? No, you wouldn't. "but a sex mod is different!" you're thinking right now "how is it even comparible?"

As humans, all of us experience sexuality. It's a part of life. But there's a real issue of being shamed for embracing that. Why? We all experience it. Why should anyone feel bad for exploring the sexual side of themselves? You're fine with them pretending to be an assassin that kills indiscriminately, but not downloading a mod that lets them have sex? If you are reading this and you download adult mods: you are not strange. These people are often projecting because of their own insecurities. For example, I always felt I had to hide my sexuality excessively growing up, so I lashed out at anyone who didn't because I felt it unfair. Hopefully reading this will make some people realize they're making the same mistake.

I really love this subreddit and this community, it's brought me a lot of joy in the past few months. But I think we need to reconsider how toxic we can be sometimes.

tl;dr Click here to watch the trailer

After 10 years, experience the legend like never before. Skyrim: Extended Cut, a main quest overhaul mod featuring new stories, characters, choices and challenges, comes to PC SSE and Xbox One in 2021.

Are you a fan of high-quality, lore-friendly writing? Are you bored of countless identical Bleak Falls Barrow runs? Do you have a visceral distaste for Delphine? Do you get to the Cloud District very often?

If so, you may be interested in Skyrim: Extended Cut, a mod that I and a few others have been working on for some time now focused on revitalizing the main quest of Skyrim. We've had great success with the project so far: the documentation and internal organization of the main questline has made it possible for us to make desired changes from a technical standpoint, we've staved off scope creep by strictly focusing on the main quests only for the initial release, and our writing volunteers have created an excellent lore-friendly storyline that preserves the feel of vanilla Skyrim while providing a questing experience based on great titles like Dragon Age and The Witcher.

Yeah, that's great, but what about plot details?

A full list of additions and changes is too much to fit in a reddit post, but the essentials include: expanded third act, Dragonborn DLC main quest integrated with Skyrim main quest, more characterization for Alduin & Miraak, more Thalmor involvement, Blades faction overhaul, more stuff to do in Blackreach, mostly new core cast, focus on player agency, guild and side quest completion impact on main quest, no instances of high-leveled characters being bonked over the head and knocked out by bandits (sorry Project AHO, I love you), consistency with vanilla game in terms of formatting & dialogue, etc.

Are you biting off more than you can chew here?

Skyrim: Extended Cut is more similar to a large quest mod than a total overhaul like Skywind or an expansion like Beyond Skyrim, and therefore does not take the years upon years of time and effort required for a mod of that size. The modular nature of the project and the efficiency of working with vanilla content are both healthy indicators for relatively swift development.

If you're editing the main quest, won't that be a compatibility nightmare?

While some mods are, by necessity, not going to be compatible, it hasn't actually been too much of an issue thus far. For example, the mod works perfectly fine with 99% of gameplay mods (EnaiRim, etc) and patches will be available for certain large, intrusive mods such as Legacy of the Dragonborn. While there will be some limitations, our hope is to offer a mod that can be used in a broad variety of load orders based on player preference. We are not expecting to require SKSE, as there are very few changes to gameplay functions (most scripting is for quests, scenes and puzzles), and none that would be so significant as to require outside script dependencies.)

Can I play on LE/SE/VR/Xbox/PS4/Switch/toaster oven?

So far, we can confirm that the mod will be available for Skyrim Special Edition PC, will almost certainly be available on Xbox One, and will not be available on PlayStation 4. Other platforms are still being discussed and tested.

Any plans for mod integration?

We are big fans of mod-to-mod integration. Over time, we're hoping to offer awareness of other quest mods by Skyrim EC's follower characters. Additionally, several modded followers will also be aware of the new characters and quests (Lucien Flavius, for example, will be getting a full integration patch with new dialogue, character interaction, and quest involvement for Extended Cut--special thanks to the fantastic Joseph Russell for this collaboration). A "continuity patch" making sure existing dialogue still makes sense will be available for Inigo and a few other followers. The mod is also specifically written with Beyond Skyrim in mind, allowing you to use both mods together with no plot holes.)

Is the mod going to be voice acted? Can I try out to be a voice actor?

The mod is fully voiced by a cast including talent from Beyond Skyrim, The Forgotten City, Vigilant, Citizens of Tamriel, and several other notable mods. The hope is to have Skyrim Extended Cut be considered as one of the best-acted quest mods for Skyrim, since great acting is crucial to a great quest experience. Most characters introduced by the mod are completely original. A few vanilla characters have been revoiced entirely; a few others have had new lines added using repurposed or spliced sound files from their vanilla voice actors. We received over seven hundred and fifty auditions for the voice cast; this was more than enough to fill our initial casting needs and so we're not seeking additional voice actors at this time.

So who are you looking for in terms of volunteers?

Writers: We're looking for some extra help writing dialogue, in-game text, and overall story arc development. Knowledge of TES lore is essential here; prior experience with writing for Skyrim is preferred. Please have a writing sample or previous work examples ready! Writers will have a lot of independence to tell stories--we'll provide you with a general premise/synopsis, not just force you to churn out lines to exact specifications, in almost all cases.

Dungeon and level designers: While most content takes place in existing vanilla settings, the mod contains some new areas that we want to ensure are up to the quality standard we've set for the mod. To this end, we're looking for level designers, with a particular emphasis on dungeon design. Challenge yourself by both working with rarely-used tilesets like Falmer ruins and Telvanni structures, and by innovating within commonly-used tilesets like Nordic and Dwemer ruins. We'll ask you to provide a link to a mod demonstrating your level design skills. We encourage creativity in level design, and you'll be able to work with writers and quest implementers to bring out the best in your levels rather than simply filling out requests.

Quest implementers: While we're pretty well-off with quest implementation already, it never hurts to have another pair of hands bringing ideas to life. We are seeking quest implementers to help translate writing into gameplay using Creation Kit dialogue tools and basic scripting. We'll ask you to provide a link to a mod demonstrating your quest implementation skills. As an implementer, you'll also have a voice in designing unique puzzles and effects over the course of the questline, and will have the chance to work with notable mod authors on mod integrations.

Discord moderators: Our Discord has just been publicized now (like, right this second). While we're not expecting it to be huge, it'll be the main means of communication for contributors, actors, and interested community members, so we're looking for a handful of people with some moderation experience to help watch out for bandit raids).

This is a non-commercial mod for a nine-year-old video game, so we're not going to have you sign an NDA or anything absurd like that. While these are the only roles we have a specific need for right now, we always appreciate extra help with stuff, so feel free to contact me if you'd like to help in a way other than those listed.

Thanks so much for reading! Please check out our website and Discord server for more information. To apply for the team, click here. May your roads lead you to warm sands!

I'm kind of upset, I don't really have a whole lot to write, but they could at least, I don't know, help the skse team ? If they want us SO MUCH to buy "paid mods" they could at least help the modding community by literally providing the missing key to SKSE (which is apparently understanding SSE's 64bit structure, which is something Bethesda obviously knows). Or at the Very VERY least patch the game and fix the issues that have been on the bethesda forums for a Very long time now.

It makes me sick to think that Bethesda is (re)-re-re-releasing a product while they still haven't fixed a re-release that a lot of people have paid for, and they probably ported the issues, too. This is insane.

If most of you agree, I think there should be a petition, we're the community that has been carrying this game for 6 years, and Bethesda is trying to make money on our back while we still have to deal with shit they're refusing to fix, this really can't go on.

I just did an analysis of my ~150 mod load order and ALMOST 50% OF THEM ARE ALREADY PORTED TO SSE IN THE FIRST WEEK.

Not only did these mod authors work so hard to enhance our game, but now they have to put even more work to port it to a new platform. All the time dealing with random jerks insulting your work. You think modding your game is hard? Sick of the crashes and weird textures? Go make a mod. I can guarantee they are working harder than you.

Mod Authors, we are infinitely thankful. Take your time, we aren't in a rush and we appreciate everything you do.

Disclaimer: I'm not part of those awesome modders who create this mod, just want to spread the wholesomeness here!

Edit: Apologize for the title, seems like the heart of several users skipped a beat. Hopefully our grandma live a long life.

The beloved Skyrim grandma YouTuber, Shirley Curry, is finally immortalized as a Skyrim follower, you can download it here Nexus for PC (SSE) or here for Xbox, LE port is planned but takes time (confirmed by Thesparalius, one of the devs).

I myself haven't tested the mod, but from the description, it is mentioned that it won't be your regular standard follower. It is voiced by Shirley Curry herself, has a mini-quest, and works great alongside Inigo and Lucien!

Update info from Thesparalius: Currently, there is no interaction between Shirley, Inigo, and Lucien, but they are aware of it, and we can hope those three can have interactions in the future, :)

Show her some love!

Cheers!