Vanilla Skyrim reaches a whopping 2 billion mod downloads, surpassed only by Skyrim: Special Edition's 6.2 billion record

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Easily the two biggest games on Nexus Mods

Skyrim
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Skyrim is the game that just keeps giving - or the game that just won't die, depending on how much you love its memeable world - as the base game has now reached a whopping two billion mod downloads.

As beloved as Bethesda's immortal RPG is, the base game can be kind of rough in certain areas. So it didn't take long for players to start tinkering themselves, circa 2011, with fixes and graphical improvements and quality-of-features. But Skyrim mods have since evolved. There's a mod for everything. New weapons and spells? Of course. DLC-sized packs with more areas and quests? You bet. Lore-friendly hair mods? Errr, sure. Hell, there are even mod manager mods to help you keep track of all the mods you've downloaded. (Now I've said mods too many modding times.)

It's no surprise, then, that people have now downloaded mods for vanilla Skyrim more than two billion times. According to Nexus Mods, the only game with more downloaded mods than Oldrim is - you guessed it - Newrim (Skyrim: Special Edition), which has an even more impressive 6.2 billion downloaded mods. 

Altogether, people have downloaded mods on both Skyrims more times than there are humans living on Earth - though it's a bit harder to track the planet's population since it fluctuates quicker than the base game's framerate.

Nexus Mods' other biggest games barely come close to scratching what the Skyrims have done. Fellow Bethesda heavyweight Fallout 4 comes closest with 1.7 billion, Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas pulled over 700 million mod downloads, and Cyberpunk 2077 sits at fifth place as its mods have been downloaded over 500 million times. It's worth noting that the two open-world fantasies handily have more mods on the table than any other game, too, which probably helps. 

Redditor Soanfriwack guesses that this might be the last milestone base Skyrim reaches for a while, however. "Even if the current traffic continues (it likely won't, as daily downloads have been continually decreasing since 2018), it will take at least 50 years 'till Oldrim will reach the next milestone (3 billion downloads or 100,000 mods)," they write on the modding subreddit.

Skyrim veteran says “there’s not a single day I’ve contemplated going back” to Bethesda because “you’re very much a cog in the machine.” 

Kaan Serin
Freelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.