Now that Bethesda has supposedly fixed most of the large issues with Skyrim (and is finishing up a patch to fix the stuff that the new patch broke), the developer is looking to the future. While it's not talking about DLC or expansions just yet, which is good, considering we've still got a few hundreds of hours worth of stuff left to do on the disc, the developer is still planning on rolling out regular updates. In a post on its website, it laid out its plans for the coming months, which include the imminent release of modding tools, Steam Workshop support, and, of course, more bug fixes.
The biggest announcement is an official word on release of the Creation Kit, which will allow PC gamers to use the same development tools Bethesda used to create Skyrim to mod it. In the post, Bethesda confirms that it will be made available for free in January for all PC Skyrim players (sorry, console folk). Its release will be coupled with the release of a Wiki and tutorial videos to get prospective world builds building worlds immediately, too. More excitingly, the Creation Kit will be launched with support for Steam Workshop.
For those who don't know, the Workshop is essentially a Valve-run modding community that lets anyone bundle mods and upload them, making it easy to browse, rate, and flag mods for download. According to Bethesda, "You’ll be able to do this from any web device, including your smartphone. Like a live Netflix queue, when you fire up Skyrim, mods you flagged will be automatically downloaded and installed. Everyone here is really excited about the opportunities and possibilities this opens up for our entire community."
Above: Bethesda is hard at work to fix the game enough so that we'll stop using this image
You will, of course, be able to use traditional modding websites, just in case you're streets behind the curve with this whole "cloud" thing.
Lastly, Bethesda confirmed what we already knew: more patches are coming, with more fixes to more issues. "We all know this is a huge game, and everyone has a different experience," Bethesda posted. "We’ll continue to do everything we can to make the game better and better for as many people as possible every day. We’ve also realized that with the millions upon millions of people playing Skyrim, we need to treat our updates with greater care. If we get too aggressive trying to fix a minor issue, we run a risk of breaking something larger in a game like this. To be safe, we are prioritizing code side fixes right now over data fixes. Quest and balance issues are usually data, and those will start rolling in a large way with the January updates."
