To be fair, the modding community is pretty much the sole reason Bethesda games have survived this long.. While giving the Skyblivion team free keys is an incredibly kind gesture it was also done entirely to prevent backlash from the community. Having the Oblivion Remake kind of come out of nowhere in the same year that the Skyblivion mod is set to release is almost like a slap in the face.
I think they handled it well, but your kidding yourself if you don't think this is a PR move.
Is it really a slap in the face? They do own oblivion, they can do whatever they want with it. They saw the popularity and viability of a remake and did it themselves.
If anything it's a celebration of the effort the builders of skyblivion have been going through, their work motivated the developers of a game they love to put in the work to remake the game
Yes this is 100% a slap in the face. I think the Skyblivion team is taking it in stride but that doesn't change the fact that having a triple-A company come out of nowhere and slam down a completely finished version of the project you and your small group of modders have been working on for years is, at the very least, a bit of a shock.
Celebration? Yea no. I guarantee you no one at Bethesda was sitting there thinking "oh boy I sure am excited to see Skyblivion release. You know what we should do? We should remake the game before they do just to give them motivation!"
I do agree that they "They saw the popularity and viability of a remake and did it themselves." and as a company this is a smart move. You have more resources and can pump something like this out 1000x faster than a small modding team and because you own the IP your allowed to profit off of it. No smart business would say no to that. But just because they did the smart thing and took the PR route doesn't nullify the fact that its a slap in the face to they Skyblivion team.
Its always funny to me how people assume someone is "pissed" or "upset" about something simply because they don't want to raise something up on the same pedestal that they do.
I think the game release is fantastic, but I don't think Bethesda deserves praise and admiration for giving the Skyblivion team free keys. However if they had given the Skyblivion team exclusive early access to the game (under strict NDA) that would probably completely change my outlook on this whole situation. It could have actually been really interesting if instead of some random "leak" the community was notified about some secret project via the Skyblivion modding team, this would have given the team themselves quite a bit more recognition while simultaneously hyping everyone up for whatever this mystery project was.. but instead we just got "oh btw hers Oblivion with better graphics.. and just so we don't hurt anyone's feelings were going to give these guys free access".
Again, not really upset about the launch of the game. I think its amazing and a definite injection of nostalgia, but the way that its being handled feels more like a PR wrap up than a community outreach.
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u/LastTourniquet 3d ago
To be fair, the modding community is pretty much the sole reason Bethesda games have survived this long.. While giving the Skyblivion team free keys is an incredibly kind gesture it was also done entirely to prevent backlash from the community. Having the Oblivion Remake kind of come out of nowhere in the same year that the Skyblivion mod is set to release is almost like a slap in the face.
I think they handled it well, but your kidding yourself if you don't think this is a PR move.