Fallout 76 players are already modding the beta

Bethesda said in June that it was "100 percent committed" to Fallout 76 mod support, but not until some time after launch. It appears some inventive players didn't get the memo, because mods for the beta version have already started popping up on Nexus Mods.

Some of the mods replace images in the menus with snaps taken from various Fallout 76 trailers, while others replace menu audio with custom music, such as an acoustic version of the Fallout theme tune. You'll also find a texture replacement mod for Nuka Cola bottles and another mod that removes Bethesda's default start-up logo.

They're limited in scope, but the very fact they exist would suggest we can expect many more to follow. It requires a fair bit of work to create a Fallout 76 mod, though: one of the modders told Eurogamer that the game "doesn't allow the traditional way of modding by editing some configuration files that tell the game to not require those packaged assets"—as a workaround, they instead used Fallout 4 modding tools, which work because "the core of Fallout 76 is basically identical to Fallout 4".

Modder Neeher, who made the vault suit retexture, said they'd modified packages of Fallout 76 assets, called archives, inside a Fallout 4 modding tool called Archive2. "You can modify the files inside an archive with this program, such as replacing textures," they said.

Neeher warned that Bethesda might see mods like this as a "threat" because the developer is also selling cosmetic items via microtransactions. I'd expect the fact that all the mods only exist for the player, and won't show up when anyone else looks at your character, to count in modders' favour. Besides, if Bethesda is going to support mods as promised then it will have to find a way for them to co-exist with official cosmetic items.

Let's wait and see how Bethesda reacts.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.