Bethesda gave Oblivion Remastered game keys to the entire Skyblivion development team and ‘made it clear that they have no intention of shutting down our project’

Fan-made remakes of popular games are a risky thing. You never know when you’re going to sink years of your life into a passion project, only to eat a cease and desist letter from an expensive lawyer representing a faceless corporate overlord that forces you to either change it up or shut it down entirely. That seemed like a real risk for Skyblivion, the ambitious, long-running effort to recreate Oblivion in the Skyrim engine, especially after it became clear that Bethesda was working on its own official Oblivion remaster.

Happily, in this case the outcome was very different: Instead of forcing an end to Skyblivion to protect its commercial interests, Bethesda sent a key for Oblivion Remastered to everyone working on it.

“Huge thanks to our friends @bethesdastudios.com for their continued support of Skyblivion!” the mod team wrote on X. “As massive fans, we’re beyond grateful for the generous gift of Oblivion Remastered game keys for our entire modding team! This means so much to us. Thank you for everything, @bethesda.net!”

And, to assuage any concerns that this is all a fake-out, the team said in a follow-up message that “Bethesda made it clear that they have no intention of shutting down our project.”

Of course, it could be a double-secret fake-out: Give the Skyblivion team a truckload of Oblivion Remastered keys, and then just wait for everything to grind to a halt while they blow a year or two playing it. I would 100% fall for that.

The Skyblivion team recently expressed “all love and no hate” for Oblivion Remastered, despite its potential to steal their thunder, saying their mod “always was a passion project and still is until the end,” and it’s great to see Bethesda reply in kind. It’s probably over-optimistic but it’d be nice to see more of this sort of thing in the future.

Speaking of things that are nice, the first day of release is going exceedingly well for Oblivion Remastered: Less than 12 hours after launch it’s surpassed 150,000 concurrent players on Steam along—more than double the peak of Skyrim Special Edition—the user reviews are good, mods work, and players aren’t even mad about the new horse armor. Can’t ask for anything more than that.