Creator behind hugely popular Skyrim co-op mod gives up on the Starfield version of it because, drum roll please, 'this game is f***ing trash'

A ringed planet on the horizon
(Image credit: Bethesda Game Studios)

2023 has turned out to be the year of Baldur's Gate 3, RPG-wise at least, and it's easy to forget that no-one expected it to be this way. Many including myself expected the biggest and best game of the year to be Bethesda's much-anticipated Starfield, the first new series from the studio in decades and its first singleplayer RPG since 2011's remarkable Skyrim, one of the most beloved games ever made—and one that has had a unique afterlife thanks to mods.

Skyrim is the most-modded game in history, with Nexus Mods hosting just shy of 130,000 mods across Skyrim and Skyrim: Special Edition. Given that Starfield was widely perceived to be "Skyrim in space", the expectation was that Starfield would see something similar, and indeed the game has already been the subject of over 6,000 mods. Whether it can sustain that mod-mentum is another matter, and a recent development in the Starfield modding community throws doubt on it.

One of the main creators behind Skyrim Together has announced, in pretty brutal language, that they've thrown in the towel on Starfield Together. To briefly explain, Skyrim Together is a mod that lets you play the whole game in co-op with up to 30 players, and it's really rather good. To give an idea of the scale of this thing, Skyrim Together Reborn (the definitive version of the mod) has over a million downloads, and the Skyrim Together project overall is a big enough mod that other creators make mods for it.

So hopes were high for Starfield Together. Alas: it looks like they are to be dashed.

Robbe Bryssinck goes by the handle Cosideci and is one of the coders that was working on Starfield Together. Was. Cosideci took to the mod's Discord channel today, however, to announce he was done with it in no uncertain terms.

"When the game released I was hyped, like a lot of people, but probably for different reasons," said Cosideci. "I spent launch day and a few days after reverse-engineering the game, and porting over gameplay hooks from Skyrim Together to a potential Starfield Together mod. I ported about 70% of Skyrim Together reversed code to Starfield Together.

"There was just one problem: this game is fucking trash."

Tell me what you really think. Cosideci adds "I didn't realize this until after I actually started playing the damn game a week after launch." He goes on to call it "boring," "bland", and says the big draw of Bethesda games is "exploration in a lively and handcrafted world" which is "completely gone" from Starfield.

Which makes his big announcement no real surprise: "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 says that as they've done the work, they're going to upload the code as open source in case anyone else wants to finish it, though warns that "'finishing it' is probably still upwards of 100+ hours of work." 

By the end of this I was almost wincing on Starfield's behalf. The TL;DR is even more of a drive-by murder. "I made a start on Starfield Together, but Starfield is ass, so I stopped working on it."

This is of course just one modder saying they don't like Starfield, albeit pretty definitively, and to be clear Cosideci was part of a bigger team on Skyrim Together: so while he's out with a bang, there may yet be some hope for a Starfield Together mod coded by someone else. But it does feel that, several months after launch, the mood music around Starfield is not great, and people are beginning to realise that maybe this isn't going to have the kind of afterlife that Skyrim did.

Cosideci's Discord post later found its way onto the Starfield subreddit, where the top comment from Boyahda seemed to land with a lot of the game's more dedicated fans: "I never considered that "the modders will fix the game" only works if modders want to fix the game."

Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

Read more
The creepiest guy leans in front of an NPC mid-conversation in Starfield.
Starfield promises it still exists as silence drives fans to space-madness, but it mostly just annoys everyone: 'They are deliberately choosing not to communicate more'
Skyblivion evil character
With the next Elder Scrolls and Fallout games still years away, here are 6 upcoming total conversion mods for Skyrim and Fallout 4 to get excited about
A man shouting while waving his sword in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and BioWare have to offer
Paradise building in the sun in Avowed
Avowed's inert cities remind me just how good we had it in Skyrim and Oblivion
Starfield First Contact
Bethesda intended Starfield to be more violent, including 'meat caps' for beheaded astronauts, but the gore was toned down for technical reasons and because it 'didn't fit thematically'
The director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, Todd Howard, addresses the crowd about the new Fallout video game during the Bethesda E3 conference at LA Live in Los Angeles, California on June 10, 2018. - The three day E3 Game Conference begins on Tuesday June 12.
'I think geniuses come up with terrible ideas, too': Former senior artist at Bethesda likens Todd Howard's struggles with complete creative control to George Lucas
Latest in RPG
Rise of the Ronin review
Rise of the Ronin review
A lolporrit squeals in excitement while being driven in a moon buggie in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, patch 7.2.
Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.2's trailer has me finally hyped to get stuck back in—and to go to the moon and pilot some mechs, because why not
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 barbers change hairstyle - Henry sitting on a horse wearing armour.
How to find a barber and change hairstyle in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 image - Henry riding a pink and blue striped horse while holding a fish
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now has Steam Workshop support, and of course one of the first mods lets you adjust the 'jiggle physics'
Erenshor - A player and two simulated MMO party members stand on a plateau in front of a yellow landscape
This RuneScape-looking 'simulated MMORPG' has all the nostalgia without the drama because all the other 'players' are NPCs
Latest in News
Will Poulter holding a CD ROM
'What are most games about? Killing': Black Mirror Season 7 includes a follow-up to 2018 interactive film Bandersnatch
Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers
Sony, which is making a Helldivers 2 movie, is also making a new Starship Troopers movie, but it's not based on the Starship Troopers movie we already have
Assassin's Creed meets PUBG
Ubisoft is reportedly talking to Tencent about creating a new business entity to manage Assassin's Creed and other big games
Resident Evil Village - Lady Dimitrescu
'It really truly changed my life in every possible way': Lady Dimitrescu actor says her Resident Evil Village role was just as transformative for her as it was for roughly half the internet in 2021
Storm trooper hero
Another live service shooter is getting shut down, this time before it even launched on Steam
Possibility Space concept art.
Possibility Space owners sue NetEase for $900 million over allegations it spread 'false and defamatory rumors' of fraud at the studio that ultimately forced it to close