Bethesda Game Studios faced a lot of pressure, both internally and externally, to develop Starfield using Unreal Engine 5. In the end, they decided to stick with their proprietary Creation Engine. A former Bethesda artist shared that their commitment to modding support drove this choice. For instance, Skyrim, created with the Creation Engine, launched in 2011 but still attracts active modders in 2026. If Bethesda had switched to Unreal Engine 5, they would have had to rebuild their modding pipelines from scratch.