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On April 3rd, 2006, Bethesda Game Studios released one of the most despised pieces of DLC ever made: Horse Armour. Created for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the cheap DLC was designed as a test bed for the smaller content drops on the Xbox 360 marketplace, and gamers across the world quickly turned on it.
18 years later, Oblivion systems designer and Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith has looked back at the maligned DLC for Bethesda’s RPG. After leaving Bethesda to craft novels such as Mischief Maker and work on indie games, Nesmith admits Bethesda had no idea how much backlash the DLC would create, but that the studio was doing something no one else had done at the time.
Looking back at Horse Armour
In an interview with VideoGamer, Nesmith explains that the Horse Armour DLC was a test at Bethesda Game Studios for downloadable content across multiple platforms. Before Horse Armour, the studio’s expansions were released on discs and, in the form of Morrowind on Xbox, were packaged in separate Game of the Year Edition releases.
In looking back, Nesmith reveals that the horse armour debacle was completely unexpected. With the largely cosmetic DLC only planned as a cheap testbed for giving gamers additional paid content, the backlash caught the studio off-guard.
“One of the things about Horse Armour that you have to remember is Bethesda, I believe, was the very first company to do downloadable content expansions,” Nesmith told us. “Nobody had done that before for the platforms. We literally pioneered that. And so Bethesda didn’t know what the hell it was doing at the time. We didn’t know!”
Nesmith explains that the team wanted to do “something small” for its first attempt, remembering discussions from the team saying: “We won’t charge much for it.” As soon as the DLC released, for a now-tiny sum of 200 Microsoft Points ($2.50/£1.50), gamers revolted against the studio.
“Both Bethesda and Microsoft were caught flat-footed at the response to it, [we] did not anticipate that at all,” Nesmith remembers. “Only in hindsight could it be seen that that’s not what people wanted and that we basically thumbed our nose at them without realizing it. So, part of the Horse Armour story is you’re going to make mistakes when you’re the first one in the water on something like that.”
Nicki Minaj in CoD isn’t Bethesda’s fault
Since the release of Horse Armour, many games have leaned into cosmetic DLC, a move that many blame Bethesda for. Over the years, games such as Call of Duty have released skins for Operators that cost almost as much as a full game; Blizzard’s Diablo IV even released its own Horse Armour that cost an eye-watering amount of money, and Epic’s Fortnite is kept alive by constant cosmetic offerings.
“I think… you can thank online games for a much stronger interest in costume-related DLCs,” Nesmith told us. “Things that are purely visual or audio for you character, they’re not gameplay related, that’s become more and more accepted when you have a game where you’re playing against other people and other people will see it.
“The fact that I can run into a Call of Duty game and I look like Nicki Minaj, people want to be able to do that. Would they buy a Nicki Minaj skin if they were just playing on their own without a PvP experience? I kind of doubt it.”
Almost two decades later, Nesmith admits that the online rebellion against Horse Armour “absolutely” feels quaint in the face of the industry’s billion dollar industry of microtransactions and cosmetics. “I mean, you know, looking back at Horse Armour, it’s like, ‘Wow, what the hell are we thinking?’” the veteran developer said.
Bethesda’s best-selling DLC
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.
“It 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.”
18 years on, Bethesda itself has made sure to reference and make fun of its biggest controversy. The studio raised the DLC’s price as a joke, released Mud Crab Armour for Skyrim Special Edition and more. At the end of the day, it’s part of the studio’s history and, as meme’d as it is, players obviously wanted it.
For more Bethesda coverage from our time with Bruce Nesmith, read about why Bethesda won’t be switching to Unreal Engine anytime soon or why the studio’s games release with so many bugs.