“First you ridicule, then you buy”: Bethesda was shocked by the negative reaction to the horse armor DLC for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The controversial horse armor addition for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006 caused so much noise that Bethesda still remembers it. A former employee told us what the company was thinking when releasing such DLC.

Image Source: VideoGamer

Former design director of Bethesda Game Studios Bruce Nesmith, who was also a system designer in Oblivion and a lead designer in Skyrim, decided to return to a sore subject 18 years later in an interview with the VideoGamer portal.

According to Nesmith, Bethesda was the first company to decide on DLC in the downloadable content format (in the past, add-ons were released on discs), so: “Bethesda had no idea what they were doing back then. We didn’t know!

They decided to start testing the waters with something small (horse armor cost only $2.50 on Xbox Live), but the flurry of negativity from players caught Bethesda and Microsoft by surprise – the companies did not expect such a reaction.

Skins in online games are attractive because they are visible to other users, says Nesmith (image source: Activision)

The story showed Nesmith that early adopters make mistakes, although criticizing horse armor in the context of the multibillion-dollar microtransaction industry seems strange to him these days.

Despite widespread criticism and almost two decades of memes, Oblivion’s horse armor became a bestseller. The numbers don’t lie – gamers turned out to be very interested in purchasing the DLC.

«Sales must be in the millions, for sure. I don’t know the exact number. Once upon a time I probably knew, but I don’t remember anymore. This caused us bewilderment. First you make fun of it, and then you buy it,” Nesmith concluded.