Bethesda responds to complaints that modders are fixing Starfield faster than the actual devs

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In short? There's a lot of red tape

Noel from Starfield holding hardware
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Bethesda has been publishing regular updates addressing various Starfield bugs for several months now, and community modders have been addressing many of the same issues - sometimes at a faster pace. Today, in the aftermath of the beta launch of the latest Starfield patch, the studio has explained why mods might be able to handle bug fixes faster than the devs themselves.

"Official fixes and content additions have to go through lengthy certification and localisation processes, especially for consoles (which is why the beta is only available for Steam users)," community manager Robert 'VaultOfDaedalus' O'Neill explains in a Reddit thread on the patch notes. "There is also the fact that, because of this, fixes are best bundled into larger consolidated updates that target branch milestones, rather than releasing them ad hoc. It also ensures better build testing when the new code is all together."

Projects like the Starfield Community Patch have been addressing the space RPG's bugs alongside official updates, and if you've followed the modding scene for any previous Bethesda game, that should come as no surprise. As far back as Morrowind, unofficial patches are typically recommended as the first thing you add to any Bethesda RPG, and that's not likely to change when it comes to Starfield. At least now you can take a bit of comfort in knowing why Bethesda can't always keep up with those community bug fixes: mods don't necessarily have to pass the same standard of QA. 

The community has been demanding a lot of additional Starfield fixes after the new patch notes arrived, and Bethesda has been making promises to address them. New updates are set to land "roughly every six weeks."

Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.