A Skyrim modder with nearly 500,000 downloads has announced that she's stepping away from the modding scene despite putting "thousands of hours" into her masterwork as a result of demands and harassment from the community.
Many of the 475,000 mod downloads amassed by modder Kukielle stem from her extremely detailed Skyrim follower mods. Of those, the most popular is Daegon and Kaeserius, "two custom-voiced followers with 6k+ lines that play off each other." The pair have intersecting combat capabilities, and were described by Kukielle as "my passion project," providing the player with a D&D or Baldur's Gate 3-style 'party' rather than standard followers.
Since that first release, Kukielle has created three similar follower mods; Koemia, Little Witch Taeka, and 'Daegon Legacy'. The latter is a by-product of the significant changes that Kukielle made to Daegon in the year after its release. Sometime roughly halfway through its lifetime, the original Daegon mod became the current Daegon and Kaeserius mod, changing several aspects of the former's personality and backstory in a way that proved quite unpopular at the time.
Kukielle would eventually re-release the original version of Daegon under the 'Legacy' name, noting in that mod's description the mistakes she says she'd made in changing the character, and suggesting that "it's something I won't do [...] again."
Regardless, multiple smaller changes continued to be made to the mods, resulting most recently in a two-part romantic questline added to Taeka. The result of a year of work, with more than 1,600 voice lines including custom lines for different player names, Kukielle claims that Taeka (like her other followers) is a "super follower" who is able to react to the world in significant detail. Noting that only "my free time is the limit" to that reactivity, Kukielle had also promised more work on her witch follower mod, with a third part to that romance questline also "upcoming."
It now seems, however, that questline is no longer likely to appear, and nor are any other updates to any of Kukielle's other mods. On November 10, she received a comment on her NexusMods page asking about future updates to Taeka, and expressing a hope for changes similar to those that Daegon received. In her response, Kukielle announced that she was "done," and "will not be adding any new characters to [Taeka], or any new work at all."
"Taeka's last update was a massive two-part questline that picks up the existing romance I painstakingly created for you, which I've never had any interest in," she explains, before turning her attention to her work on Daegon. "I added more content daily for a year straight to make her more enjoyable, made her the most advanced follower to ever exist, with methods that can't be replicated, all for free. [...] And since you weren't happy, I created two simpler followers that everyone can run on basic vanilla game, with player romance built in."
"I put thousands of hours into Daegon, creating, changing, adding options and listening to everyone's preferences [...] spent a thousand more hours undoing everything I created." Kukielle says that she's been working on other characters in the background in an attempt to satisfy her audience, but that those characters will now "never see the light of day despite the work I've regrettably put into them, because there is no point."
At the end of her post, Kukielle mentioned another modder, Goredev, who stepped away from their own companion project in August after 1.3 million downloads and 18 months of work amid reports of doxxing. Kukielle said that "Gore was right about this community. [...] It takes and takes and takes and almost never gives." In a post on her Discord, Kukielle also claims that photos of her were shared around the community along with denigrating comments, in addition to criticism of her work.
Currently, Kukielle's Patreon states that she makes slightly less than $300 a month from supporters, but both this example and Goredev's retirement have sparked conversations around the ways that mod creators are treated by the community.
In the responses beneath a Reddit post discussing her departure, one of Kukielle's modding partners claimed that they had had to dissuade "several recurring trolls" from commenting in Discord and forum discussions about the mods. That modder also notes, however, that "I do not know what the exact catalyst for her quitting today is. I assume something must have occurred very very recently that acted as 'the straw that broke the camel's back'."
12DOVE spoke to Kukielle to ask about her decision. She says this was "one of those things that builds up overtime. The daily harassment just for being a girl, and never being taken seriously despite the huge amount of technical work I've achieved."
"Thousands of hours went into developing my characters until they felt real in every situation they could possibly be in," she says of her work. "They were built from the ground up multiple times, more advanced each time, doing things that have never been done before in any game ... I wanted a character with some real personality, that I could actually relate with. I wanted a girl best friend."
Asked how she fit so much mod work into her life, Kukielle said "it doesn't fit into your life. It swallows you whole and isolates you with terrible and few good people."
"Being one of the only girls in a 99% male field, I'm constantly degraded and known as the 'slutty sex kitten,'" she adds. "I've never made sexual content, but people sure as hell talk about me as if I do, as if they're owed it from me." Some of Kukielle's mods are flagged as adult on NexusMods, but she stresses that they aren't explicitly sexual, and the warning label mostly has to do with swearing.
"I poured many years of my life into this, just to feel empty. In quitting, I have found my real passion, and have been obsessively working on music. I've even released my first ever album, SPIDERWEB PRINCESS, which is filled with my darkest, most genuine feelings from all of my experiences. Nothing I've ever done has ever been so meaningful to me. I have so much of myself to share with the world, and I'd much rather be remembered for something I actually enjoy."
Check out our list of the best Skyrim mods for enhanced graphics, gameplay, and more.
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