Bethesda has stirred up the Fallout 4 community once again—on August 18th, an update released that simultaneously expands the game’s technical capabilities and disrupts modders’ lives. The patch’s main feature is increasing the BA2 archive limit from 256 to 1024. This sounds like a boon for those with terabyte-sized mod builds, but the joy was short-lived.
The technical side truly exceeds expectations in terms of stability: the game should now handle heavy mods and large collections better. Bethesda also polished up the Creation Kit—the mod editor now supports Bink files, fixes asset duplication during archiving, generates grass after terrain editing, and creates .lip files using LipGen. They also fixed crashes when opening the virtual keyboard on Steam Deck, a crash due to an audio streaming error, and a crash in the Microsoft Store version when entering the Creations menu.
But all of this pales in comparison to the main problem. The update broke compatibility with mods, especially those based on the F4SE scripting extension. These are temporary inconveniences—many mods for the 11-year-old game were created long ago, and their authors have already abandoned their projects. If a mod isn’t updated for the new patch, it could remain permanently inoperable.
Steam is in a state of uproar. One of the most popular comments is harsh: the only reason for updates over the past year is greed and profit from paid creations. Users see the same pattern in Skyrim and Starfield: mods are free and should remain so, and Bethesda, instead of thanking the community that has kept their games relevant for years, is harming them. Players are outraged that the developers could have released beta versions to prevent people from being forced to update, but they don’t care.
A lifeline has already been found—an automatic downgrade tool from user ZePRiNCE. The tool allows you to roll back to one of the four previous versions of the game, and links to the guide are flying around in the comments like manna from heaven for those who want to save their builds. Bethesda also confirmed that Skyrim Special Edition will soon receive a similar update, and players are already preparing to block updates.
History is repeating itself: Bethesda is trying to improve Creations and console storage, but in its pursuit of paid content, it’s once again breaking what the community has spent years building. Modders are bracing for a rush, and casual players are preparing for long evenings restoring their builds. And, it seems, this is only the beginning.
