It may have now released its own remaster of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, but that doesn’t mean Bethesda is planning on shutting down work on the fan-made Skyblivion mod.
Let’s be honest, we all knew a spruced up version of Oblivion was on the cards. Along with those screenshots on developer Virtuos’ website, references to the project were also spotted on Bethesda’s own website before Bethesda had made any official announcement. Then last night, it finally got around to telling us what we all knew already: Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is real, and available to play now.
However, while this was an exciting bit of news for many, there is one particular group this announcement was perhaps less than welcome for, at least in terms of timing. That would be TESRenewal, the team working Skyblivion, a volunteer-based project seeking to remake Oblivion in the Skyrim engine.
When word of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remaster started gaining more traction last week, project lead Rebelzize said Bethesda’s then-impending announcement “changes nothing” as far as the Skyblivion team were concerned. Rebelzize, on the outside at least, remained positive about the project and the upcoming remaster being able to both thrive, stating it was a “win-win” for fans of Oblivion.
Now, the TESRenewal team has gone one step further and assured its Skyblivion community Bethesda has “no intention of shutting down our project”. It additionally thanked the studio for the Oblivion Remastered game keys Bethesda gifted the entire modding team.
“This means so much to us. Thank you for everything,” the TESRenewal team shared on social media.
While this is good news for the Skyblivion team and all those looking forward to the project’s release (which is slated for some time this year), Bethesda itself has said it has no plans for Oblivion Remastered official mod support.
Meanwhile since its release last night, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered has pulled in some impressive player numbers for Bethesda and co-developer Virtuos. Over on Steam, Oblivion Remastered has an 182,298 concurrent player peak so far.