A Skyrim modder was given early access to the game's anniversary edition in order to prevent a "modpocalypse."
Last month, modder extrwi, part of a team behind some of the most important Skyrim mods, warned players that Skyrim: Anniversary Edition's changes to game code were set to break the community's modding scene, stating that the disruption would last for "an unknown length of time."
Now, according to a follow-up post on Reddit (via NME), extrwi says at least some of the crisis may have been averted. They say that "In an attempt to avert the part of the modpocalypse that I can control, I've been spending all of my free time for the past week and a half or so getting [a preliminary fix] ready, and made it just about an hour before the update was pushed." Extrwi also thanked Bethesda for giving them early access to the game so they could work on the solution.
That solution takes the shape of a new version of extrwi's well-known modding tool Skyrim Script Extender, which offers proper support for the anniversary edition. The tight turnaround means that things might not be perfect, but this is far from the disaster that the modding community was worried might have come about otherwise.
The arrival of Skyrim Anniversary Edition brings a suite of new community content to the game for its tenth birthday, but for Todd Howard, none of it beats the Skyrim mod he thinks his team should have come up with in the first place.
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I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.