Microsoft Allows Bethesda To Continue To Be Cool Regarding Fan-Made Remake Projects

Bethesda has something of a history of embracing its modding communities. This has historically included not being aggressive on matters of IP against modders, attempting to build an economy around the modding community itself, and even being quite tolerant of fan-made expansions and the like of the publisher's titles. This was all well and good until Bethesda was acquired by Microsoft. Straddling the before and after of that acquisition are some ambitious fan-led projects, perhaps none larger than Skyblivion, a project to completely remake The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in the Skyrim engine.

The team behind the project previously indicated that it should be completed at some point this year, but I wondered aloud several months ago whether it would be allowed to move forward, or if this would be one of those fan-made projects that is killed off by the lawyers at the last minute, now that Microsoft is in charge. Complicating this further is the long-rumored remaster of Oblivion from Bethesda itself, released just this week. With what would be a competing project, even though Skyblivion is going to be released for free, what would this mean for the project being able to go forward?

Thankfully, and much to this writer's surprise, it appears that Microsoft and Bethesda are playing cool with the entire project.

Fortunately for the Skyblivion team, Bethesda has apparently decided there's room enough in this world for both official and unofficial remakes ofOblivion. The teamtook to social media Tuesdayto thank Bethesda for their continued support" and for the generous gift ofOblivion Remasteredgame keys for our entire modding team."

To clear up any confusion Bethesda made it clear that they have no intention of shutting down our project," the teamadded in a social media reply.

Now, hopefully, that also means that Microsoft has no intention of shutting this down, either. One would hope that any messaging about this from Bethesda has cleared whatever internal bureaucratic hurdles with the parent company required to make that stance firm.

It's worth noting several things here. First, this fan project did not make use of any Bethesda assets beyond using Skyrim's engine. Everything has been recreated from scratch, from what I understand. Second, you can't play Skyblivion without having bought specific versions of both Oblivion and Skyrim, so there really is no threat to the publisher here. In fact, this should be a boon to them and, if anything, drive more sales for these older titles.

And, finally, these fans have, by all accounts, been very cool and respectful of Bethesda throughout the process.

Earlier this month, when credible rumors of the officialOblivionremaster were running rampant, the Skyblivion teampostedthat it was eagerly aniticipating" the official release and that there was no need for comparisons or a sense of competition between Skyblivion and a potential official remaster." That's particularly true, the team wrote, because Skyblivion's PC mod won't be available for console players, who will be able to enjoy Bethesda's official version instead.

And now, Bethesda and Microsoft are being human and cool right back at them. I haven't spilled much ink praising large companies like Microsoft for being sensible on matters that include their intellectual property, but here we are. When Microsoft does something cool, I suppose we owe it to the universe to say so out loud.