Vanilla ‘Skyrim’ Players Have Downloaded Over Two Billion Mods All Together

Skimrim (Image: Bethesda)
Vanilla Skyrim recently reached its first big milestone in quite some time, but it still cannot compete with Skyrim: Special Edition.
Skyrim is undoubtedly one of the biggest games to come out of the 2010s (or ever) and it has inspired many other open-world games since its release. The popularity of Skyrim is not something that seems to be going away, and its most recent milestone is proof of that.
A few weeks ago, the vanilla version of Skyrim reached a total of two billion mod downloads across all players. Though the original Skyrim is near and dear to many gamers, it is a little rough around the edges when it comes to graphics and other details. So, a little while after its release, players took matters into their own hands and began making their own personal adjustments with the help of modding. The modding frenzy first began with making improvements to the game’s graphics and the quality of other features but quickly evolved to a new level of creativity.
Skyrim players have since created mods for almost anything you could think of. New weapons, fan-made spells, huge packs including new areas of the map and fresh quests to go with it and mods that allow for further customization are just a few examples of the endless possibilities that mods have graced players with. There are even mods available to manage all of the mods that you’ve already downloaded.
With all of these mods available to players and absolutely no limit for how many they can download, it’s not too much of a surprise that the game has accrued two billion downloads in over a decade. What is even more impressive is the fact that the amount of mod downloads for Skyrim: Special Edition far exceeds that of vanilla Skyrim. It’s not even close.
Skyrim: Special Edition has amassed an insane 6.2 billion mod downloads since its release in late 2016. No other game even comes close to this as the game with the second largest amount of mod downloads is, in fact, vanilla Skyrim. Boy, gamers really love this RPG.
The game coming in third place for most mod downloads is Fallout 4 with 1.7 billion followed by Fallout: New Vegas at 700 million and Cyberpunk 2077 comes in fifth place with 500 million mod downloads. No doubt these are all very impressive numbers, which is what makes Skyrim: Special Edition‘s total even more mind-blowing.
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Although vanilla Skyrim is still in second place, it’s highly unlikely that the original game will ever close the gap between it and its bigger, better Special Edition as many Skyrim players have switched over to the new version of the game and don’t exactly have a reason to go back. That said, this may be vanilla Skyrim‘s last milestone ever.