A few months ago, when Bethesda suddenly announced that the Fallout 4 next-gen update a lot of players had been waiting for would finally be arriving on April 25, there was one question instantly on a lot of people’s lips – what does this mean for Fallout: London.
The answer ended up being what the mod’s project lead, Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter, has since acknowledged to be “a bit of a nightmare in terms of trying to release”. There was another lengthy delay, this time without a concrete release date at the end of it, as the team worked to try and quickly update the mod to work with next-gen Fallout 4, before having to switch course to providing prospective players with a means to downgrade their copies of Fallout 4 – a change with unavoidable consequences for the launch.
Though, there has been at least one silver lining that’s come in the midst of all those headaches – the emergence of PC storefront GOG.com as a willing host for the massive mod, which found itself unable to release in the traditional fashions mods usually do, simply as a result of its sheer size.
“The ‘next-gen’ update complicated things a bit,” GOG technical producer Adam ‘Adim’ Ziółkowski says of what it’s been like working to get the mod out into the world over the past few months, “Team FOLON spent some time trying to get the mod compatible with it, but after a while, it became clear that adapting the mod to the ‘next-gen’ version wouldn’t be possible anytime soon. So, a decision was made to finalize the mod for ‘old-gen.’ From that point, we focused on making sure that the installation process is as easy as possible regardless of whether you have Fallout 4 on GOG or Steam.”
“It’s not the experience we were hoping for at the beginning,” he acknowledges, “but it’s the best we can do in these circumstances – and we keep our fingers crossed that Fallout enthusiasts will enjoy it nevertheless.”
Some good news is that Ziółkowski was able to confirm that updating the mod to a next-gen iteration at some point down the line – as Team FOLON recently hinted it’d like to do – is something the two sides are definitely on the same page with in terms of post-release support for the mod. “We already discussed getting back to the next-gen version when possible with Team FOLON as we will also have to update a launcher/installer on our end to accommodate this and provide users with new guidelines on getting everything to work,” he says, “So definitely, we’ll be getting back to this in a joint effort!”
When it came to the decision to come on-board relatively late in the mod’s development and help its crators tackle the issues outlined above, I asked GOG senior business development manager Marcin Paczyński whether the nature of the mod as something that can’t be charged for like a regular game – at least without significant contreversy – played into proceedings.
“Costs are, inevitably, always a factor, and here they are indeed not insignificant,” he tells me, “but we were willing to take the risk in the hopes that our community, people whose voice is extremely important to us, will love what we did. Still, the best way you can support us is by purchasing Fallout 4 (or any other game) on GOG – thanks to this, we’ll be able to do more things like that in the future!”
The other factor I brought up was whether the idea of just hosting it on a storefront alongside paid games was something that would have necessitated GOG to perhaps take into account a bit the backlash that Bethesda has historically faced when attemting to integrate mods into its own storefronts as part of its paid Creations initiatives. Obviously, there’s a key difference between the two as Fallout: London won’t be charged for, however, there is still the theme of taking a mod out of the online spaces such things have typicially inhabited – where, for both modders and players, there’s often an idea of a identity coming from the freedom of existing in a wild west of sorts that’s separate from the strictly for-profit side of the games industry and its inherent pressures on the creative process.
Paczyński says that, in GOG’s view, the fact Fallout: London has always been intended to be free meant that this long-running debate in terms of the ethos of making mods “did not seem to be relevant to what we were doing”. “In all honesty, hosting it won’t be cheap, as it’s over 40 GB of download,” he adds, “but if our community loves it – it will be worth it!”
As it’s been pretty transparent about, the idea of hosting Fallout: London being something that’ll help the CD Projekt-owned storefront be seen in a positive light by those hoping to play the mod and modders themselves certainly was a key factor in the decision to take on supporting it, but it isn’t the one one – GOG is using this an opportunity to explore potentially making mods a big part of its future. It’s a test of the appetite people have for big mods packaged in this manner.
“This is exactly that – a ‘trial run’,” Paczyński says in response to the question of whether GOG would be open to the idea of supporting more large-scale modding projects like this once Fallout: London is out, be they for Fallout, CD Projekt’s own Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises, or other games, “and if our community likes it, we will seriously consider doing more things like this in the future.”
“Personally, I would very much like that,” he continues, “I know that there are many amazing mods out there that we could help bring to a mainstream audience by creating a one-click-and-run experience where you don’t have to go through a complicated installation process. In addition, I feel that modding communities play a huge role in game preservation and this, in turn, is something we will always be striving to support.”
In terms of what GOG might be looking for in any mods it’d consider support, Paczyński adds: “This is very new to us, to be honest, so we don’t have any established guidelines for this yet, besides ‘common sense’, if you will. If our community likes what we did with Fallout: London when it is released, we will consider our next steps here.”
So, if you’re a player who likes the idea of being able to play massive mods for your favourite games without too much installation-based hassle or are a modder with an ambitious idea you’ve been hesitant to pull the trigger on, this could very much be good news for you. However, we’ll first have to see a big question answered – what will Fallout: London’s release and how it’s recieved by players mean for GOG’s prospective plans?