Over a decade has passed since Bethesda Game Studios blessed us with Skyrim, arguably the company’s most iconic RPG to date – and players evidently are still not sick of it, judging by the Special Edition’s downloads on Nexus Mods.
Skyrim mods aren’t going anywhere, it seems, and Nexus Mods serves as proof. The platform for sharing and downloading user-created mods for games is iconic to fans of Elder Scrolls titles and other big RPGs, ranging from Baldur’s Gate 3 to The Witcher 3. Of all the games with mods on Nexus, however, there’s one that downright dominates – and it’s none other than Skyrim’s 2016 Special Edition.
According to Nexus Mods’ own data (highlighted via Soanfriwack on Reddit), November saw around 393 million mod downloads in total. Of these almost 400 million downloads, Skyrim Special Edition took up a whopping 255 million – that means that just under 65% of all mods downloaded from the Nexus were for Bethesda’s revamped RPG. In other words, the Special Edition accounted for a wild two-thirds or so of Nexus Mods’ ever-growing traffic.
Skyrim SE is 65% of all Nexus mod downloads! from r/skyrimmods
Considering how many other games’ mods are available, these figures are mind-boggling. Bethesda takes up a massive lion’s share of downloads – by the time you add Fallout, Oblivion, and OG Skyrim, you’re looking at a full 74% of all the mods installed last month. Soanfriwack points out that the only other “significant” games taking up that remaining 26% are Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and Stardew Valley.
As a Skyrim stan myself, though, I doubt those figures will change any time soon. The Elder Scrolls 6 is still likely quite a long while away from arriving, and creative modders are constantly uploading new downloads on Nexus’ website. Just today, I can see 90 new mods have been posted with almost 500 across the week thus far.