Frequently Asked Questions

Why did you join the Verified Creators Program?

When we started Sim Settlements 2, many of our members were college age, or just getting started in their careers. Producing mods of that scale takes an enormous amount of time and skill, and we want to continue to do so for a long time. In fact, that’s all we want to do with almost every waking hour. Some folks in our team have to put in bouts of full-time effort in order to pull off the big annual releases we do, but it’s not sustainable – they can’t put in full-time hobby hours and hold a full-time job.

Bethesda’s Verified Creators Program offers a way for some folks to make a career, or at least heavily augment their income. We can take what we learn and the tools we develop for the program and make use of them in our modding as well.

In addition, we have a direct relationship with Bethesda now, which includes access to resources we never dreamed possible when doing hobbyist modding alone. It’s like getting to have our cake and eat it too. We get to work with Bethesda on their games with no approval needed as to what we create!

Are you and your team quitting modding?

No! The point of joining this program is so we can do it more. It’s a chance for us to have our 9-to-5 feed our hobby directly. Imagine everything we learn during the workday being able to enhance what we do in our free time!

Modding for free will continue to be our outlet for experimental and excessively ambitious years-long projects, it’s our hobby and passion – and we can’t imagine not having that in our lives.

Is everyone who worked on Sim Settlements involved in the Verified Creators Program?

No. Our Creations are made by a small number of people from that team. Our hope is we can expand the number of people involved and try for even more ambitious projects over time!

Will you put out other free mods?

Yes! Our current focus is on Sim Settlements 2, we’re in the middle of a 2-year post-launch support and content plan after the August 2023 release of Chapter 3. What we do after that will depend on what everyone is interested in on the team. Some folks may want to mod Starfield, others will stick with Fallout 4, or maybe even move into Skyrim now that we’ve cut our teeth on it for the Verified Creators Program .

In addition, kinggath intends to continue doing events like Modding for Charity and tutorials that will result in more free mods being released.

Will you create any free mods for Skyrim?

If we find something we’d really like to see in Skyrim that makes more sense to release for free, we’ll do so. For example, something like Workshop Framework for Fallout 4, which is designed to make a part of the base game more moddable, it wouldn’t make any sense to put that in the Verified Creators Program and so we’d give it out for free.

What game are you working on?

We’re still in the experimentation and prototyping phase before we start producing our first game. Our passion lies with creating complex systems that are introduced via character-rich stories – any game we create will almost certainly fall in this realm.

Is the East Empire Expansion your first time doing anything with Skyrim?

Everyone of us loves Skyrim, but most of us have never released anything public beyond a few tiny mods. The Bethesda Verified Creators Program gave us the opportunity to play in that sandbox during “working hours”, without which, we’d never have had the bandwidth to work on things for Skyrim and Fallout 4 at the same time.

Will your Creations be moddable like Sim Settlements?

Yes! The same design philosophies that go into Sim Settlements will go into these creations wherever possible, including releasing tutorials to help people inject their own content into our systems.

I found a bug in one of your Creations, how do I report it?

Our basic approach is to try and collect reproducible steps. As soon as we can recreate an issue without other mods interfering, we can quickly put together a solution and get a patch out. Head to our Discord server (opens in a new window) for more details about our process handling issues and submitting reports.

How much do you make from Verified Creators Program sales?

We receive a royalty for every sale of our creations.

Are you hiring?

While we’re not currently hiring, when we do, it will be extremely limited. Our goal is to remain a relatively small company so that each employee will be able to have a big impact on the things we create. Keep an eye on our social media accounts for announcements of new positions opening up.

Can we hire you to make something for us?

Absolutely! If your company is interested in producing something in our wheelhouse, we’d love to discuss the opportunity.