Fallout 4’s next-gen update arrived late last week, and uh, a lot of folks weren’t too impressed. While a lot of the initial backlash was due to technical issues or bugs, a lot of those on PC who’ve given the update a go now seem to be looking for ways to revert their game back to its pre-update state. Enter a couple of works that’ve quickly shot to the top of the game’s Nexus Mods page.
If you’re just catching up on things, while a lot of the big complants folks have had about Fallout 4’s next-gen update have involved problems that’ve either since been resolved or hopefully should be soon – such as PlayStation Plus users temporarily being unable to upgrade PS4 versions to PS5 without being charged. Meanwhile, on PC – as game updates often do – it’s rendered a lot of key Fallout 4 mods unable to be used until they too have been updated, earning plenty of ire from those in the midst of modded playthroughs who hadn’t made plans to stop their game from updating.
So, this is how we’ve ended up with two mods specifically aimed at helping people who’ve installed the update get back to playing pre next-gen Fallout 4 rocketing right to the top of Nexus Mods’ most downloaded Fallout 4 mods for the past week, despite only having arrived after the update did.
There’s Bilago’s ‘STEAM – Skip Next-Gen update’ and Zerratar’s ‘Fallout 4 Downgrader’, and between them, they’ve amassed just over 20,000 unique downloads in a few days or so.
How do they work? Well, the former is designed to “trick Steam into thinking your game is updated” by swapping the file used to keep track of this out for a modified one. The latter fully reverts your game to the pre-update version via an automated process, though I’d be wary of the fact it looks to require your Steam login credentials as part of this.
Zerratar does attempt to address this in the mod’s description, writing: “It is totally understandable that seeing that the application will require your steam username and password to work, all I can say is that username and password will not be used for any other purpose than logging in to Steam when downloading depots. As it would be impossible to download it otherwise as it needs to validate your licenses making sure you own the game.”
“Please check the source code out if you are concerned about you will see that it’s only used for this purpose,” they add, “You may also download the code yourself and run it that way.”
Another option, of course, would just be to wait and see if your mods will be updated – a process that’s either already underway or completed for some of the affected works, including the Fallout 4 Script Extender. You could even enjoy a playthrough of the vanilla version of the game while you do so.
Don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t kill you.
Sadly, the next-gen update has also forced the release of Fallout: London to be pushed back, but highly-anticipated Fallout 4 mod should hopefully still drop sometime soon.