Fallout 4 mod support hits PC in April, Xbox One in May, & PlayStation 4 in June

One of the biggest releases of 2015 is about to get even larger thanks to its community, and for once, this doesn’t only apply to the PC.

Mod support is coming to the Windows version of Fallout 4 in April, according to Bethesda director Todd Howard (via an interview with Game Informer). This will enable hobbyists to build their own content for the open-world role-playing adventure with a full set of official tools. And it will also enable Fallout 4 owners to search for mods using the Workshop browser on the Steam digital-distribution PC client from Valve. Of course, some mods are already available for Fallout 4, but getting full support from Bethesda should result in an eruption of amazing content that isn’t possible today. After Bethesda gets mods up and running on PC, it will release similar support for Xbox One and then PlayStation 4.

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This kind of support will enable Bethesda to keep a highly engaged audience on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Mods often bring back lapsed fans in addition to attracting new people. Those consumers may then spend even more money on downloadable content, which raises the average lifetime value of a Fallout 4 player.

Modding is an important part of gaming on PC. Providing curious people a way to tinker with their favorite games has led to people getting full-time careers working in the industry and the creations of totally new megapopular franchises like the Counter-Strike shooter series. It also gives PC gamers a sense of ownership over their experience. The way I play Bethesda’s fantasy role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is different from the way anyone else plays it because mods enable me to customize the world and characters how I want to. And bringing that to consoles could help ensure Fallout 4 is one of the defining games of this generation of systems for a lot of people.

“Our goal is [to get mod support out] between the first two DLC [packs],” Howard told Game Informer. “It’ll go up at that time on PC. In April. All of that stuff will go up on PC. People are beta testing it. There’ll be a lag on consoles. We want to get it up on PC and have it work. It’ll probably be a good month before it hits Xbox One, and another month for PlayStation 4.”

If that timeline holds, then after getting mods for PC in April, we’ll get them on Xbox One in May and then PlayStation 4 in June. That’ll put seven months between the release of Fallout 4 and the addition of mod support.

To put that in some perspective, we only had to wait five months from the announcement of Fallout 4 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show in Los Angeles in June before we got to play it in November.