Mod Skyrim Together is Being Made After All
The designers of the Skyrim Together mod have published May report. The report not only denies the possibility of abandoning the project but also apologizes for the controversial comment made in April. It was supposed to result from the frustration of one of the developers, who was pestered by some fans and even threatened with death.
Less than a month ago, the players waiting for the Skyrim Together mod could feel bitter. This is because the main developer of the mod said that the team "does not owe the community anything", which many people interpreted as a sign of abandonment of the project. It would be painful even with a free title, and the devs have received substantial financial support from Patreon. So it was easy to understand the widely expressed dissatisfaction. Only today did the devs decide to clarify the whole matter in the May report (via Reddit). It included creator's apologies for his comment, which was supposed to stem from frustration. It was supposed to be "poorly written," and the creator addressed his words not to the whole community, but to "aggressive and toxic" people who went so far as to... threaten the developer with death.
Skyrim Together is another ambitious mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim created by fans of the last installment of The Elder Scrolls series. In this case, the main attraction will be the addition of a cooperation mode, enabling you to visit the title province of the Empire of Tamriel with up to seven friends. Unlike similar projects such as Tamriel Online, the devs intend to deliver their own servers instead of forcing players to create new ones. That's what the Patreon fund-raiser is all about. We first heard about Skyrim Together in 2017, when the first show of the game was presented.
As we read in the report, since March the creator has been plagued by a number of players waiting for Skyrim Together, who had various demands. They demanded weekly reports and releasing the mod as open source software. Many of them did not choose their words and there were those who sent death threats (all such cases were reported to the police). Creator's comment was addressed to these "fans", but apparently, the artist's frustration did not allow him to put his thoughts into words well enough.
The report also explains why creators could not meet the demands for weekly reports. Team members take care of the mod in their free time and as a result, many of them disappear for weeks to devote themselves to working on it. Such an irregular organization is not surprising in the case of fan production, even if it's created with the support of the community. In practice, this means that developers would often not be able to write weekly summaries, because they would simply have nothing new to report. However, this in no way threatens the future of the project. Creator strongly stressed that it was totally wrong to read his comment from April as an announcement of Skyrim Together's abandonment and that production was going according to plan. The same applies to allegations of illegal use of allegedly huge portions of Skyrim Script Extender mod (also known as SKSE). The material from that production was to constitute a small part of the code Skyrim Together, and all elements of SKSE were removed from the current version of mod. He added that currently the funds raised by Patreon are not used at all.
The report also reveals something about the team's recent activities. In addition to the aforementioned finalization of SKSE code removal, developers are working on adding support for the original release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (commonly referred to as Oldrim) and changing the system of creating and deleting new objects (for example, created by players) in order to eliminate most of the bugs that cause the game to be forced to close. Unfortunately, the starting date of the open beta has not been given again due to problems with the stable operation of the mod. So far, it has been decided to release nightly builds, i.e. automatically created versions of the mod. They are available through a dedicated client, but the devs point out that this is definitely not an option for people who would simply like to play. If, however, you are not deterred by the vision of a heavily bugged Skyrim Together, below you will find a video with instructions for installing the mod and creating servers. However, you can read the full report in a document published by the team.
