Just saw some comments on the xEdit Discord this morning from ElminsterAU, the primary dev for the project. He’s been backwards-engineering Starfield since it came out, tweaking his project to make it work for Starfield. This is important because, as soon as he does, (safe) plugin-based mods become possible, opening up the floodgates for a whole new class of Starfield mods. Only, in its current state, he’s not sure he can make it work. Or, for that matter, that the CK due from BGS “early next year” can make it work, either.
The image I’ve posted is a collection of carefully selected snippets of a much larger discussion, with all the supporting info being excluded for brevity. This is “headline reporting” at its worst, so I encourage anyone tracking this topic to go to the Discord and dive deeper.
Maybe he’s having a bad morning after spending all night attempting to decipher undocumented code that is, literally, legacy built upon legacy built upon even older legacy. But if it’s really this bad, then the modding scene for Starfield is going to have a much harder time getting started than is currently being anticipated.
Maybe just up and ask Bethesda for docs, even if they’re on a best-effort basis and not guaranteed to be complete? I mean, Bethesda derives benefit from the mods. They have, in the past, done at least some limited collaboration with people who build framework tools for modding (like giving early access to releases to the Address Library guy for Fallout 4 to help speed up updating mods). I doubt that they have anything there that could be considered a trade secret or some competitive advantage. And worst they can say is “sorry, but no”.
BGS seems to have some kinda weird “arms-length” relationship with the modding community. Like, they know who the SFSE guys are, but they never coordinate patch releases with them so that they aren’t mad-rushing to modify the extender to keep everyone’s modded games from crashing. I dunno - maybe there are some sort of legal ramifications at work here. Like, if they help the modders, they become responsible for what gets modded. Or something. I’m just speculating.
It’s kinda funny though. Here we are playing one of BGS’s least buggy releases in history, and now it’s just looking like they swept all the code debt under the carpet and plan on fixing it all “next year”.
I’d honestly be willing to bet that it’s some kind of legal thing.
Slightly relevant story: there’s a hat company that I really like that make funky designs each week, so I emailed them with a couple ideas for a theme. Their reply was an immediate no, but with the explanation that if they were to actually take the idea and run with it, then it could open the possibility of getting sued over IP.