Skryim Dev Reveals Why Todd Howard’s Games are Immune to the DLC Curse

There’s no doubt that Bethesda has been the titan of the gaming industry for decades. Despite its recent downward spiral, the company is renowned for creating the Elder Scrolls franchise, several Fallout games, and Starfield.

These RPGs are known for their large, immersive worlds packed with interesting characters and stories to unravel. Todd Howard and his team don’t mind expanding upon these game worlds with multiple expansions either, since they’re immune to the industry’s DLC curse.

Bethesda is Safe From the Gaming Industry’s DLC Problems

Recently, while chatting with VideoGamer, Skyrim‘s lead designer, Bruce Nesmith, opened up about the game’s development and why it didn’t receive any more than the game’s three expansions despite its incredible success. Instead of developing more DLCs, Bethesda wanted to flex its creative muscles with Fallout 4 and, later, Starfield.

While talking about the current state of DLCs, Nesmith noted that they bring a lot of issues for studios. Despite producing major hits, studios believe that DLCs can be a loss-making endeavor due to all the hype behind the game vanishing into thin air after the release. However, that isn’t the case when it comes to Bethesda’s games.

It just takes an awful lot of effort [to make an expansion]. To create the Shivering Isles, that was many, many months. And by that time, who’s playing the game? Well, in the case of Skyrim, everybody. Bethesda games, not uniquely, are in a very, very select company of games that have a long play cycle.

Bethesda isn’t afraid to pump out more DLCs for its successful games because they boast a long play cycle, keeping a solid and active community for years. The company’s unique approach to crafting RPGs encourages players to explore and replay. Seriously, you can spend hundreds of hours in any Bethesda game diving into main quests and side missions and discovering hidden secrets.

What puts Bethesda in an even better position is the modding community built around its games. It’s been 12 years since the release of Skyrim, and it still competes with modern-day titles due to the modding community’s constant support in elevating the game to further heights.

By constantly evolving its formula, Bethesda brings incredible replayability to its games that allow it to support them with worthwhile expansions without having to worry about the game losing its momentum and hype. There will always be gamers ready to hop on a brand-new DLC by the company.

Bethesda Still Needs to Learn from Its Mistakes

It’s great to see that, unlike some developers, Bethesda isn’t afraid to constantly bring expansions to the game. However, it seems like the company has dropped the ball when it comes to DLCs.

It’s just been a few weeks since the release of Todd Howard, his team’s latest creation, Shattered Space DLC, for Starfield. While the company promised us that it would truly revolutionize the base game, it turned out to be a massive failure.

Immediately after its release, it was review-bombed to oblivion since it didn’t match the expectations and did not bring anything new to the table.

What’s worrying is that it took Bethesda over one year to craft Shattered Space, which is quite bizarre considering the company previously gave us some incredible DLCs in way less time.

With how the company has handled Starfield and its DLCs, players feel like The Elder Scrolls 6 might prove to be a failure, which will be a disaster for Bethesda. It’s high time for the company to realize its mistakes; otherwise, it wouldn’t be long until it ends like Firewalk Studios after Concord.

With that, do you think Bethesda games offer good replayability? Let us know in the comments below.