Skyrim's lead says Bethesda has been shocked by the furious response to Oblivion's Horse Armour DLC. But it still sold'millions of copies': 'You all make fun of it, yet you buy it.'

The furor over Oblivion’s Horse Armour DLC is quaint now. Two bucks for some mount skins, really? Amateur stuff. We spend $20 these days to recolour portals.

Bethesda's release of Oblivion mini-DLC in 2006 was a big deal. It was one of the first big videogame controversy I can recall, and it caught Bethesda by surprise. In a conversation with Videogamer in 2021, Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith recalled the time, saying, "Bethesda was the very, very first company to offer downloadable content extensions... Bethesda had no idea what it was doing." We didn't even know!

Bethesda tested the waters of the newfangled "downloadable content" thing by releasing a small pack of fluff in the Xbox store. It cost a little more than two dollars.

The players felt nickeled and dimed, and they made this very clear everywhere they had a chance to speak. And the rest is history. Nesmith claims that Bethesda and Microsoft were "caught off-guard" by the response and "didn't anticipate that at any point." In fact, only in retrospect could it be seen that this is not what the people wanted and we have basically snubbed them without realising."

The players were still angry, but they paid a lot of money for Horse Armour. This is pretty much in line with every other major gaming controversy that has occurred since then. According to Nesmith, Horse Armour was sold "in millions, it must have been millions," although he cannot recall the exact figure. "That was a bit of a shocker for us. You all make fun of it, yet you still buy it." It's impossible not to remember that memetic image of a Steam group called "Boycott Modern Warfare 2", which showed nearly all of its members playing Modern Warfare 2

Horse Armour will look pretty austere when viewed in the cold light 2024. Nesmith does not believe Bethesda was responsible for this development. "You can thank the online games for a stronger interest in costumes-related DLCs," says Nesmith. I reckon he's right. Bethesda did not start the microtransactions fire, it was only an early ember.