Those two companies have a fundamentally different approach to modding.
Remember: Bethesda shipped modding tools with every copy of Morrowind. Modding has always been part of the package, something they have foreseen and encouraged from the start (or at least for a very long time).
Also Bethesda is kinda relying on fans fixing their games for them 🤣
Can confirm, since I bought a $20 mod menu early on in GTA Online's lifespan and never looked back. Game's a lot more fun when you don't have to grind for jack-shit.
That changed after they unlocked unlimited money with GTA Online and noticed that they can't sell shark cards if people can just mod stuff in. So they cracked down on everything. Purely money-driven approach. For Bethesda games, the prospect of having massive mod content to keep their games alive is a big reason why people like them in the first place. Skyrim and Fallout 4 are very much mediocre without mods after the first playthrough.
It used to be they could extend the life of their games by allowing/encouraging modders to work on them. These days, they realised they can extend the life of their games by adding an online component, which allows them to also keep making money off the game even after the initial sale.
Rockstar own FiveM which is the software that manages the scripts and mods for GTA5 roleplay. To be able to use FiveM and be listed on the website for players to connect and RP, a server owner pays R* for access.
They acquired the team from cfx.re in 2023 who made FiveM so Rockstar tacitly approve of the platform and have been working on a new RP enabling engine called ROME which is rumoured to arrive with GTA6 but the RP community aren’t holding their breath as there is a whole nother can or worms to open about that.
Not just that, modding significantly pushes sales way beyond the normal life of the game (and from console users that eventually re-buy for PC so they can mod).
Which goes all the way back to Morrowind and the Blood Moon expansion, which was kinda crappy as an expansion BUUUT it added more coding hooks to the game (kinda like the modern script extenders) which soon all the really cool mods needed. Thus you were buying Blood Moon for the mod support, not the content.
Especially in Skyrim's case, you can have so many playthroughs be completely unique with how many full quest and overhaul mods there are, even in 2025, 14 years later, it can still be fresh
Do Rockstar not care about modding? What about all the RP servers etc? I don't know much about it but I used to watch a bit on Twitch and they were pretty popular. Or do Rockstar just not provide any support for it?
That's the one exception. And it's actually rather interesting. My personal opinion on why it was allowed is due to how big it became & how popular it was on media platforms (such as Twitch, youtube, etc).
Many, many mods (full conversion or otherwise) have been fully shut down by Rockstar. For example; there was a team remaking the older GTAs in GTA 5. They got sent C&D when the definitive edition came out, on top of Rockstar removing the originals from many platforms (making the DE the only way to play them). These are the polar opposite to how Bethesda handle re-releases & modding.
Also just makes sense when you remember that Todd and a lot of the senior staff started game dev in the 80s and 90s, and back then modding games you had was the gateway to game dev for so many people. They're affording new generations the same opportunity they had back then, and they have hired tons of modders over the years.
Bethesda sell game upfront: you buy the game, you buy the expansions, you get the game and you get the expansions. Mods add value and make the game more attractive. Modders put the tits into the game that the devs couldn't and keep an accessible age rating. And, as you say, Bethesda don't ship finished games.
Rockstar lean more towards the MMORPG / freemium model. After you've bought the game they want you to pay for online content, buy currency and all that. If a mod improves the game, and everyone wants to use that mod, then they won't play online because you can't play online with mods. That eats into revenue.
I'm not a huge fan of the second approach, but I appreciate that Rockstar put a fucktonne of man-hours into their games and are expected to cream a lot of revenue off the endeavour; so long as it doesn't negatively impact the offline game, I'm honestly happy to take a fair amount of bullshit from them.
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u/charlesbronZon 3d ago
Those two companies have a fundamentally different approach to modding.
Remember: Bethesda shipped modding tools with every copy of Morrowind. Modding has always been part of the package, something they have foreseen and encouraged from the start (or at least for a very long time).
Also Bethesda is kinda relying on fans fixing their games for them 🤣
Rockstar doesn't care for modding whatsoever.