“[Horse Armor] must have been [sold] in the millions, it had to be millions,” Nesmith said. “I don’t know the actual number, I probably did at one point, I just no longer remember that. And that was kind of a head shaker for us: you’re all making fun of it and yet you buy it.”

And that right there is the reason why the industry is absolutely saturated with this shit now. If people had just chilled the fuck out when this shit was first introduced, made sure it was an absolute flop from a sales perspective (not only for this one, but for others that were released back then, too), we might be in a better place now.

I was working in the industry at the time and people absolutely talked about the implications of microtransactions and how it would result in more expensive games and being nickel and dimed.

Like, I distinctly remember conversations with actual human beings from exactly the horse armor DLC and maybe we didn't think it was going to result in, say the online shooter battle pass formula exactly, but we without ambiguity understood that meaningful in game items, and things like levels / experience would be monetized.

The biggest shocks to me were how patches would be used to reduce the game testing cycles, enabling companies to print incomplete or broken versions of games, requiring day one patches.

It's a disgusting practice now, and it was then too.

Their mistake was not making it available for only 2 weeks for $40 like Blizzard.

Bethesda had no idea how much backlash the DLC would create

Yeah sure.

Either they're just straight up lying, or they're completely incompetent over at Bethesda.

Sadly, both don't seem very unlikely realities for what that studio turned in to.

Online games are different because you control the hosting and the service has much higher upkeep. Don't try to apply the same shenanigans to single player games. Also pissed me / pisses me off that they started doing this Borderlands 2+

But then they say,

Despite the massive backlash and more than a decade of memes, Horse Armour DLC’s popularity was proven by the wallets of gamers. While Bethesda was being flamed for releasing the paid content, the numbers don’t lie, and gamers were actually very interested in paying for the DLC

Their main market focus is on whales now. They make it very clear, they see the Horse Armor DLC as a success story.

I don't know how people there are like me, but I have forked over a lot on TES:O that I will no longer ever fork over again, and I regret having fueled their foray into single player. I will not preorder TES6, and I will have to wait for discounts to begin applying to their new franchises. As someone who was deep into TES lore, I will no longer care about TES6's monetization or their attempts to tie into and guide players into TES:O.

But whales... Whales never change.

Bullshit, Bruce Nesmith. You're just a dishonest coward trying to absolve yourself of blame.

Edit: the paid horse armor was extremely controversial among gamers at the time, and plenty of people prophetically warned about what the consequences were going to be. Bethesda damn well knew or should have known exactly what Pandora's box they were opening.