Dev behind massive Skyrim multiplayer mod turns their hands to Starfield, gives up because "this game is f***ing trash," uploads everything for someone else to finish

Starfield kid — (Image credit: Bethesda)

We could have got a large-scale Starfield co-op mod from the team behind Skyrim Together, but there’s just one issue: The modder who started work on the project thinks the space-faring RPG is “fucking trash.”

One of the Skyrim Together developers has taken to the project’s dedicated Discord server to tell everyone how the short-lived project came to be. Cosideci explains that they were so excited about the idea for Starfield Together that they spent launch day and beyond reverse-engineering the space RPG and porting over gameplay hooks from Skyrim to get a co-op mod together.

It wasn’t until they ported about 70% of Skyrim Together’s revered code to the Starfield project, though, that they bumped into a problem: “This game is fucking trash.”

“I didn't realize this until after I actually started playing the damn game a week after launch,” they say. “The game is boring, bland, and the main draw of Bethesda games, exploration in a lively and handcrafted world, was completely gone.

“Anyways, everyone already knows this, most people agree. There's no need to further repeat the point, just read any of the dozens of reviews online. That said, I won't be continuing development on Starfield Together. I'm not gonna put my heart and soul into a mod for a game as mediocre as this.”

Cosideci’s work isn’t going to waste, though, which brings us to why they posted something in the Discord server’s announcements section. They’re uploading all their work online if someone wants to finish it. Mind you, they say that “finishing it” is probably still upwards of 100 hours of work. The developer also says that Starfield Together isn’t playable right now despite all of the work already done.

Concluding on a TL;DR, they say: “I made a start on Starfield Together, but Starfield is ass, so I stopped working on it,” they say. “I made it open source in case anyone wants to finish it. No, you can't play it yet.”

While Starfield has divided opinion since launch, there’s plenty more to come from the space RPG. Bethesda says that over 12 million people have played the game and that we’re just at the start of the game’s journey, with DLC and updates in the works. Just recently, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said he hopes Starfield will be a 12-year hit, just like Skyrim. If there’s one thing that Starfield doesn’t appear to be getting that Skyrim has, though, it is a big ol’ co-op mod from one specific team.

Bethesda responding to negative Starfield reviews is no surprise, say indie devs who do the same: "This is becoming industry standard."

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.