The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrimis celebrating its tenth anniversary on June 28, 2025, and with it comes another re-release to mark the occasion.Skyrimhas been around in several forms for the past decade, appearing on nearly every major gaming platform.Skyrimis even playable on the Amazon Echodevice. It’s undeniably an iconic game for both Bethesda Softworks and the RPG genre as a whole, so it’s unsurprising the company wants to celebrate its tenth year since release.
However, the upcoming re-release titledThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Editionhas created a lot of confusion about what exactly is different from the most recent release,Skyrim Special Edition.With less than three weeks before release, many fans ofSkyrimare curious if theAnniversary Editionis worth spending some extra money on for the eighth time. There are subtle but important differences between theSpecialandAnniversary Editionsworth discussing as well as whether or not there will be upgrade paths for existing owners. AsSkyrimis among the most successful games of all time, there are bound to be more people who currently own a copy than those who do not.
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Skyrim Special Edition
In 2016, Bethesda releasedSkyrim Special Editionfor the then-current consoles of PS4 and Xbox One. A year later, the company created and launched the very divisive Creation Club program in which Bethesda would hire and pay well-known modders to create small pieces of downloadable content alongside the developers. One of the reasonsSkyrimhas been so consistently popular for the past decade is because of the extensive andpassionate modding community. The Creation Club caused a small panic that Bethesda would make its otherwise free mods cost money. However, nothing really changed afterward but it is notable that the console versions ofSkyrim Special Editionnow had access to both free and paid mods for the first time which gave console players a reason to purchase theSpecial Edition.
In the years following the release ofSkyrim Special Edition, the Creation Club has received numerous pieces of DLC ranging from weapons and cosmetics to a survival mode and short questlines. Thebest thing about the Creation Clubhas is its stability. That is when viewing Creation Club content, the player knows exactly what they’re getting and that it will work flawlessly withinSkyrim Special Edition. This is compared to the sometimes spotty guesswork associated with less experienced modders which can cause crashes and break game mechanics if implemented incorrectly.
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Skyrim Anniversary Edition
There are, essentially, two versions ofThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Editionbased on what is currently known. There is the free upgrade path for owners of the aforementionedSkyrim Special Editionand there is the paid version which includes every piece of Creation Club content as well as new pieces. The price of the latter is currently unknown, however, Bethesda has quietly been raising the price ofSkyrim Special Editionacross its stores to $39.99. TheSkyrim Anniversary Editionis essentially a large update to theSpecial Edition, not its own separate download like theSpecial Editionwas for the originalSkyrim. Somewhere around that $39.99 figure seems appropriate for the paid version as it is just higher thanAlan Wake Remastered, for example.
Gamers that haveSkyrim Special Editionon their next-gen console will receive an enhanced version ofSkyrim Anniversary Editionthat includes some next-gen visual and performance overhauls. Furthermore, the free upgrade path includes a small taster of some of the best Creation Club offerings. AllSkyrimplayerswill receive the fishing gameplay mechanic which is entirely new, as well as the Survival Mode and Saint and Seducers questline. These selections should do a good enough job of highlighting the possibilities of Creation Club mods and might entice players to fully upgrade to experience everything.
How Much is Skyrim’s Creation Club Worth?
Given that the only difference between the free update and the paid version is the number of Creation Club mods players have access to, that is likely to be the deciding factor for whether or not gamers purchase it. In total, to purchase every piece of individual content forSkyrim Special Edition, players will need 15,850 credits. Due to the payment structure, that is always $120 and players will have roughly 700 credits left over that they can’t spend on anything else. There are also several bundles available but due to the fleeting nature of these, it’s generally advised to not purchase any, especially after owning one or more items in a bundle.
It should be pretty clear thatSkyrim Anniversary Editionwon’t be sold for $120 even though it has that amount of content. This calculation also does not include the two dozen new pieces of Creation Club content so that figure would actually be even higher. Whether or not theAnniversary Editionupgrade is worth it depends on how much value is placed on all the Creation Club content and how much of it has been experienced already. It’s unclear whether Bethesda will provide a discount from theAnniversary Editionif some of the Creation Club content has already been purchased. It would not be a very good situation if someone who spent $40 on the Creation Club would have to spend another $40 to get the remaining pieces of content where everyone else simply has to spend $40 once.
There is a lot of confusion surrounding theupcomingSkyrim10th anniversary, and Bethesda’s silence on key issues such as pricing does not help the situation. TheSkyrim Anniversary Editionrevolves around the Creation Club which was introduced nearly five years ago with theSpecial Edition. Previous owners ofSkyrim Special Editionseem to be able to upgrade to a visually enhanced version of theAnniversary Edition, alongside three pieces of Creation Club content including the entirely new fishing mechanic. The quiet raising ofSkyrim Special Editionto $39.99 seems to indicate that number will be the price of the upgrade to access all Creation Club content. As of writing, it’s also unclear what the new pieces of content will be aside from fishing, but with less than three weeks until release, Bethesda is running out of time.
The Elder Scrolls 5: SkyrimAnniversary Editionis releasing Jun 04, 2025 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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