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Skyblivion fan project lead reacts to Oblivion remake news with "all love and no hate"
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this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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If I recall correctly the team behind Skyblivion was (or still is) in contact with Bethesda throughout the development and had no problems with the latter in regards their work. Heck, Bethesda itself posted about the mod on their site in 2023.
They've been aware of Skyblivion for years and there's no indication they're interested in killing it.
That goodwill can change in an instant, especially if they are releasing a competing product, and especially if the legal team gets in the loop rather than the development staff.
Can it change? Sure. There's just no reason to expect that based on Bethesda's approach to modding until now. I'd rather base my expectations on their past actions rather than assume the worst just in case.
skyblivion is great marketing, and it's free to let them keep going for now. Keep people excited about a new oblivion, and then kill the only other option besides yourself. I actually think it's more likely than not that there is a last minute reversal.
It can't if they've made legally binding agreements, which I would hope that they have.
Well the "product" is a free overhaul mod.
That cuts into Bethesda's paid re-release.
It really really really doesn't.
We can already see it with stuff like the Beamdog remasters. People insist that it is totally better to play BG2 with these five mods, that launcher hack, etc. And everyone except for the usual suspects just say "Buy the Beamdog release. It has almost everything you want and is zero effort".
Also, the mere existence of a fan project (that will never release in a satisfactory manner...) shows that Bethesda is super mod friendly and blah blah blah.
How does it not? It is the same game map, same missions, even the same character names. You just know the corporate bros would hate an alternative to their paid remaster that is basically the same thing.
Yes but they definitely don't wanna piss off the fan base... Again.
Bethesda is pretty open about their support in modding.
Exactly, which is why I don't expect them to do anything hostile towards this project - both remakes have their own goals and approaches after all.
Also, Skyblivion will, at worst, only cut into their PC sales. The official remake will be the only option available on consoles due to the nature of the mod.
Maybe they aren't, but what about the company that is doing the remake? They might argue it will hamper their ability to meet estimated sales and overall profit.
At the end of the day Virtuos are just a contractor - Bethesda are the ones with final say in the matter. Despite all their flaws they never really showed to be hostile towards these kind of projects (or at least I haven't seen them act that way) so there's no reason to automatically expect the worst. That's just my opinion though.
For all their faults, Bethesda may be the most mod-friendly AAA studio out there right now.
I can vaguely recall a single instance where they shut someone down, and that was over re-used audio assets from an older game. That was almost certainly about contractual licensing obligations to voice actors.
Did they even shut them down back then? I might be thinking about a different situation but I remember one of the other remake mods (was it New Vegas on Fallout 4 engine?) where they simply told the team they can't use the original audio. The cancellation of that mod happened months later and didn't even have anything to with that issue, I believe.
Either way, this kind of scenario is something I skipped over in my initial question since banning reuse of assets in different engines is a legal thing. I mostly meant them blocking/killing projects for no "serious" reason.
Still, it was a good idea to mention these kind of issues as well.
Yeah, I don't remember all the details myself, so you're probably right. I was basically trying to support your thesis that Bethesda getting nasty over mods would be something entirely new and out of character. The only example someone could even try to point to had a bunch of other (better) explanations than "mod bad, Bethesda mad."
I actually thought about including this case in my original post but I have tendency to waffle way too much and in the end decided against it to keep things shorter. It is a useful example to mention so thanks for that.
They don't have any rights to Oblivion as an IP. They've been contracted to make this game and that's where their rights end.
It's not about IP rights, but about contractual obligations. If the mod affects those in some way, the company might ask Bethesda to make it go away.
That's true. It's still on Bethesda, but yeah they could have an agreement. Skyblivion has been in development longer than this though I'm sure, and Bethesda was aware of it and said it was OK, so I'm assuming there's no agreement like that. If there were then Bethesda would have done something that will make them look really bad, which they do tend to do so it is a possibility.