In an industry where corporations often wield cease-and-desist letters like broadswords, ready to decapitate fan projects faster than you can say “intellectual property”, Bethesda just did something… unexpectedly wholesome.

Instead of kicking down the doors of the Skyblivion team’s metaphorical castle and torching their years-long fan remake of Oblivion (rebuilt painstakingly in the Skyrim engine), Bethesda did the unthinkable—they gave them a gift. Yes, a gift. Not a threat, not a demand, not even a strongly worded email. A gift.

Every single person working on Skyblivion received a game key for Oblivion Remastered, Bethesda’s official glow-up of the 2006 classic. Not only that, but the studio also explicitly told the fan team that they have no intention whatsoever of pulling the plug on their passion project.

Cue the collective sigh of relief echoing across Reddit threads and modding Discords worldwide.

For context, Skyblivion is what happens when a group of obsessive, detail-loving fans say, “You know what Oblivion needs? A full-blown makeover in Skyrim’s engine,” and then actually do it over the course of more than a decade. Usually, this sort of devotion earns you a nastygram from a legal team faster than you can build a single dungeon, especially when the parent company announces its own remaster.

But Bethesda? Nah. They hit the modders with kindness, not contracts. One could almost mistake them for… human?

Huge thanks to our friends @BethesdaStudios for their continued support of #Skyblivion!

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. pic.twitter.com/vLsuzhdgkX

— Skyblivion (@TESRSkyblivion) April 22, 2025

The Skyblivion team responded on X with unfiltered gratitude, calling Bethesda “friends” and thanking them profusely for the support. Their statement, dripping with sincerity, reads like a love letter from one nerd collective to another: “This means so much to us. Thank you for everything.”

And just to squash any speculation about this being a slow-motion trap—like giving modders a shiny toy just to distract them from their work—Skyblivion clarified that Bethesda “made it clear they have no intention of shutting down our project.” Still, if you handed me a remastered Oblivion and told me not to get distracted, I’d cave in 10 minutes. Probably less if the horse armour’s included.

What’s more, Skyblivion’s lead dev even sent love back to the official remaster crew, reaffirming that the fan project has always been about passion, not profit. No drama, no rivalry—just mutual appreciation and thousands of lines of code.

Meanwhile, Oblivion Remastered is off to a galloping start, racking up over 150,000 concurrent players on Steam in under half a day—more than Skyrim Special Edition ever managed. Reviews are positive, mods are running without combusting, and players are shockingly unbothered by the return of the infamous horse armour. Honestly, it might be the most peaceful moment in Elder Scrolls history.

So yes, a big studio just did a nice thing for a group of unpaid volunteers without any ulterior motive—unless, of course, the long game is to get the Skyblivion team hooked on Oblivion Remastered and quietly kill the project through sheer distraction.

Either way, it’s a win for modders, a win for Bethesda’s PR team, and a rare win for humanity. Someone get Todd Howard a sticker.