Skyrim's Survival Mode Is Currently Free

With Bethesda's Creation Club now in full swing the company has decided to unleash a feature that is bound to entice gamers and even lure in a few skeptics of the Creation Club. How is Bethesda attempting to pull off such a feat? Well, by giving away Skyrim's Survival Mode for free.

Gamespot is reporting that for a limited time Bethesda will allow those who opt into the Creation Club beta for Skyrim on PC, PS4 or Xbox One, they will be eligible for downloading the Survival Mode for the game... for free. The mode is only going to be available for Skyrim: Special Edition.

I'm sure this leaves some gamers scratching their head because the Survival Mode is already free for PC gamers who own The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and it has been available already within the modding community and in various types and forms. For console gamers, however, they don't have the luxury of accessing many of the more complex and advanced mods available on PC.

Both Microsoft and Sony have some stiff restrictions when it comes to allowing mods on the Xbox One and PS4. There are 2GB memory limits, as well as a rather fun-inhibiting policy on the PS4 that prevents external assets from being used in mods for games like Fallout 4 on the PS4.

Of course, the restrictions on user mods means that the games are exponentially worse on consoles than PC when it comes to modding capabilities. There is a way around those restrictions, however, and Bethesda found the loophole in the form of the Creation Club. Instead of calling the items "mods" Bethesda have labeled them closer to the likes of microtransactions or DLC.

Gamers can purchase the mods from the Creation Club shop for points, and the content is distributed in similar fashion to purchasing an in-app cash shop item. This allowed Bethesda to get around Sony's restriction on the PS4 for not allowing any external assets.

For Skyrim in particular, the inclusion of the Survival Mode into the Creation Club isn't a huge feat for the company, but is more-so a testing ground for eventually adding bigger and more complex add-ons to the Creation Club.

A lot of gamers have not been all too keen on the Creation Club due to the typical early launch bugs, and the fact that a lot of what's on offer through the Creation Club isn't much more impressive or feature-rich than the free mods you can get on PC at the moment from places like NexusMods or the Steam Workshop.

Others see the Creation Club as paid mods 2.0, and have automatically rejected it on principle. Some have attempted to give it a try but ran into problems when compatibility issues between the Creation Club content and the native mods sprouted up.

You can currently get your hands on the Skyrim Survival Mode feature from the Creation Club for free from now up until October 10th next week. The mode is available for PC, PS4 and Xbox One owners.