Not saying there aren’t people who don’t like the vanilla experience, but it’s success would be nowhere near as huge if not for the modding community. Skyrim is the two biggest mod communities one Nexus, and the top 5 are all Bethesda games. In the top 8, 6 of them are Bethesda games. Skyrim has been on top since I’ve been using nexus, and I’ve been using it for a decade or more, and that’s to say nothing of the other sites out there. Clearly modding is a tremendous part of Skyrim’s appeal
I beg to disagree.
Not saying there aren’t people who don’t like the vanilla experience, but it’s success would be nowhere near as huge if not for the modding community. Skyrim is the two biggest mod communities one Nexus, and the top 5 are all Bethesda games. In the top 8, 6 of them are Bethesda games. Skyrim has been on top since I’ve been using nexus, and I’ve been using it for a decade or more, and that’s to say nothing of the other sites out there. Clearly modding is a tremendous part of Skyrim’s appeal
I would agree if we are talking longevity, but it was a success well before modding took off for it
Part of its success IS the longevity it got because modding keeps games alive
Skyrim sold between 15-20% of its copies on PC on release.
Modding support built the franchise fanbase, but it’s not why normies play Skyrim.
1 in 5 people being mod users is not negiligible