Fallout 4 and Skyrim Mods Not Coming to PS4 Anytime Soon or Possibly Ever, Bethesda Explains

With an update on the company's official website, the folks at Bethesda explain that mods for their games (Fallout 4 and the upcoming The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition) won't be coming to Sony's PlayStation 4 anytime soon. While they don't elaborate on the details, Sony apparently won't allow for mods to be released "the way they should work" and as a result Bethesda doesn't want to move on with the project.

It would be interesting to know exactly what limitations Sony wants to impose compared to Microsoft, and why Bethesda felt confident enough to announce mod support for the console if they hadn't worked out these kinks yet.

I'm going to quote the full message below:

After months of discussion with Sony, we regret to say that while we have long been ready to offer mod support on PlayStation 4, Sony has informed us they will not approve user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition.

Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive. We consider this an important initiative and we hope to find other ways user mods can be available for our PlayStation audience. However, until Sony will allow us to offer proper mod support for PS4, that content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PlayStation 4 will not be available.

We will provide an update if and when this situation changes.


If I were a Sony executive (and there's a good reason I'm not one), I'd probably do everything to change Bethesda's minds, considering their releases have entered the small upper echelons of console games in terms of sales and that mods might well be a decent advantage for their console competitor.