Fallout: London Suffers Delay, Dev Wasn't Told About Fallout 4 Update

I’m confused. Why were they, a bunch of amateurs not affiliated with Bethesda at all, expecting any type of information before a public announcement?

Wasn't it first mentioned like over a year ago?

Also, don't think the London mod is going to be playable on Xbox.

I'm really interested in this mod, and have been for some time. I have a capable gaming PC, and am very curious to how the mod measures up to the original game. That said, news of this upgrade being in the works has been around for probably a year or more, so regardless of whether Bethesda should or should not have given the mod developers a heads-up, they should at least have been aware that it was coming at some point...

@GeeForce we knew about it for over a year but we didn’t know the code on which mods are based and implemented would completely change causing all mods pre update to become incompatible. The assumption was that wouldn’t happen.

Is it a free mod?

@Ryu_Niiyama because a large part of Bethesda games are the modding community, so much so they feature them on their website, have helped promote them and even have employed people who were working on this very mod. Whilst of course they don't have to, I am surprised they didn't give these guys a heads up

@ZYDIO yes it will be

@darkswabber

Ah okay, that is a bit crap.

Hopefully mods won't be completely broken and require little work as possible to be compatible with the new version.

Well, there's sure to be some fallout from this.

Umm not to be mean but why would Bethesda tell you about their plans and yet you're not working for them? They don't owe you anything. I respect the modding community but you're straight up delusional for thinking that.

That sucks as I was looking forward to it, but at least I get to replay Fallout 4 tomorrow. After watching the tv show, am all into Fallout atm. Funny how that happens. Been playing Fallout 3, but plan to jump right into Fallout 4 tomorrow.

From my perspective, they are NOT associated with Bethesda so Bethesda has NO OBLIGATION to be in touch with the Developers. They are using Bethesdas Engine and IP to create something they 'wanted' to make.

As soon as Bethesda mentioned an update was coming to 'update' Fallout 4 for Next Gen Consoles, the onus should be on them to reach out to Bethesda.

I know it looks promising and Fans are looking forward to it - but its still 'unofficial' and a 'mod' of Bethesdas IP using Bethesda's Engine. It should be on them to contact Bethesda and 'respect' Bethesdas choice to focus on their Official IP for their Fans and time it well enough to coincide with the TV show.

To me this is them trying to drum up some more publicity for their 'Mod' and why it won't arrive as soon as they had planned/hoped/promised to have it ready for.

Ummmm....

...raise your hand if you've known this update was coming for quite a while..

Are the London people making money off the London expansion?

Why was this not expected, when the same exact thing happened to Skyrim when they added the Anniversary Edition stuff?

Betheda could have been initiated unofficial communication between the two. Nothing on the official record and easily denied by both parties.

For a company that gets to benefit from extensive mod support, that's rather selfish.

@themightyant No, I understood what happened. That was why I said what I said.

I’ve been playing Bethesda games since Oblivion and have been enjoying mods since then as well. However that still seems ludicrous to expect that a company would share anything about their code or dev cycle with modders outside of what is shared with the public or what they carefully curate to share with a mod community within the TOS. Bethesda can’t just give a heads up. Yes, modders put in a lot of work but they aren’t a contractor or internal resource. Bethesda has no obligation to divulge any additional information to them. They provided the modding tools and some monetization access (I don’t use CC so I can’t speak to it much) and are fairly hands off barring really blatant IP issues. That’s pretty much the best a stranger can expect without contracts and NDA.

My question is more from trying to understand why a complete third party is expecting/hoping for/thinking they should be privy to additional/insider information. It doesn’t matter how great a mod dev is, legally they are an outsider and they are only bound by the TOS of the game and the modding tools (been a while since I read both but I believe they cover this). So I am not confused about Bethesda’s actions, I am confused about the mod dev’s absurd expectations/hopes. It shows a lack of awareness of how proprietary information is distributed from a company to public. This dev (and those angry about this) seems to have forgotten they are the public. So they have to do like mod devs always do, if the official updates break your mod…fix your mod. It sucks, but Bethesda owe them nothing and “good faith” conversations aren’t that simple. There are a lot of contracts and legal vetting that has to go on to convey that information. I work in IT and my company is an integration contractor and the amount of NDAs I have to sign (and I am not even a dev but run the infrastructure) or that we make even potential partners sign is… a lot. But it is for legal protection. People think “well they can just…” or “it would be good faith if they…” with no care to the actual process and context behind it. And I find that confusing because we have so much information available that tells you why a company “can’t just…”. I am willing to bet if those devs were willing to sign the contracts that would elevate them to contractor they wouldn’t like the restrictions that would be imposed on them. You can’t have it both ways.

This grey area where people don’t understand how businesses work but have the platform to complain and spread their misunderstanding is what I find confusing. Fandom is great(within reason), but people attach a lot more standing, power and expectation to it than they should. So no, I don’t see anything wrong with what Bethesda has done. But I am still confused by the mod dev’s expectations.

@themightyant the key point you (and I mentioned already) just made is that there are additional steps to go from part of the public to some level of partner/contractor/insider. I emphasized the lack of this relationship in my initial post. So my question is unchanged. I thought it was fairly straightforward and succinct but I suppose that is because I am aware that the legal process behind communication between two parties has boundaries. So I am confused as to how the mod dev who hopefully read the TOS and interacts with the communication mediums Bethesda offers (it’s been awhile since I dabbled with making mods so my knowledge is out of date on that front) and should be aware that they are a third party and thus privy to the same level of information as a third party (ie the public) and whatever is generally provided to modders. It doesn’t matter if it inconveniences the modders and nobody but Bethesda (and their legal and PR teams) can decide what they can share based on the existing TOS between modders/gamers and Bethesda. Going anywhere outside that is emotional bias and my comments have nothing to do with that. I’m talking solely actions taken by Bethesda based on legal or preemptive legal boundaries.

I’m sorry my initial comment was confusing. Unfortunately it makes sense how I worded it to me, so I am not sure how to edit it to be more clear.
So I guess another way to put it is: “I am confused. Bethesda and the modders have distinct legal relationships and the relationship that the modder has to Bethesda (essentially public with perks) does not give them standing to have access to any information outside their current legal relationship. The devs should be aware of this as there is a TOS, so why are they acting like they are not? That legal relationship can’t be hand waved just because the modders are inconvenienced. I would assume they are aware of that and don’t understand why they are having this illogical response or expectation/hope.”

Edit: people tend to misinterpret or make assumptions on what I say (even though I feel I am pretty straightforward) so I want to state here that my tone for my responses to you is quite neutral.