Angry Gamers Get Creation Clubbed

There is a good article over at RPS detailing the issues that Steam is experiencing with portions of the gaming community in revolt over questionable moves by developers, such as with paid mods in the form of Creation Club for Skyrim and Fallout 4.

These hostile review actions are meant to punish developers for unpopular decisions, and apparently are affecting the bottom line as the retailer (Steam) is forced to deploy data graphs to explain away anger spikes, and the developer (Bethesda) is forced to have a fire sale on their initial content offering, putting up some items for free after requiring users to pay credits (cash) for them.

This further exacerbates a situation where all Steam based end users were required to download an update (which can no longer be refused on Steam) that placed the data files on the customers machine, regardless if they paid to unlock the content or not. After an outcry from the community, the developer alluded to this being a design mistake that they would investigate.

The next Creation Club update to come out apparently did not install the new files onto the customers machine, but inexplicably left the original content alone. With absolutely no guidance from the developer, those who did not purchase any unlocks and did not wish to have these files on their computer were left to fend for themselves in terms of figuring what should be deleted to purge the content properly.

The Creation Club could be a tool that when properly utilized enhances the end user experience. Unfortunately, the less than professional rollout and the fouled-up customer-unfriendly follow-up have left a bad taste in many gamers mouths, with many in the community suspicious of anything the developer does to mitigate the damage.