In surprising news, Skyrim mods are more popular than ever, with new stats for 2023 showing a record number of creators and creations for the Bethesda RPG. With Skyrim itself over a decade old and multiple mod-supported versions available to choose from, the fact that it’s more popular among mods than ever is surprising.
There has been a meteoric rise in Skyrim mods, modders and downloaders since the release of Skyrim Special Edition in 2017, and Nexus Mods stats illustrate how the number of mods downloaded increased tenfold between 2017 and 2023.
In November 2017, over 10 million Skyrim mods were uploaded to the platform, while in January 2023 there were nearly 115 million, before February 2023 dropped to just under 90 million. The number of new cases has also increased on a similar trajectory, reaching around 1,500 per month, or 50 per day on average, by the end of 2022.
For both images, downloads are in blue and new files are in yellow (images taken from Nexus mods).
Skyrim Special Edition Mod Stats
With full conversion mods for Skyrim and Oblivion, and countless Skyrim mods of varying sizes still receiving thousands of downloads every day, it’s hardly surprising. In fact, Starfield’s impending release date might have Bethesda gamers clamoring for as much content as possible.
The most surprising part to me is that despite Skyrim’s age, which definitely shows the standard version of Bethesda’s fantasy game, the modding community has clearly grown and grown. The number of players downloading mods and creating them has only increased.
Skyrim Base Game Mod Stats
Interestingly, the Nexus Mods stats for the original Skyrim did the opposite of the Special Edition, showing a drop in new files and downloads. It’s probably because Skyrim Special Edition is an overall better version of the game with support for Bethesda mods, and doesn’t indicate much else. After all, the base game version of Skyrim is still very popular.
If you want a fuller picture, there are almost 60,000 Skyrim Special Edition mods in total on Nexus, with over 2 billion downloads as well. The original Skyrim also has nearly 70,000 mods and 1.9 billion downloads, which shows a lott of content.
You can see the full stat breakdown for Skyrim Special Edition here and the original Skyrim here.
If you want even more, our look at the best games like Skyrim is sure to lead you to Bethesda’s next big release. Or you can see a huge Bethesda sale slashing Skyrim, Fallout, and even Doom.