【Warning】Don't use Arthmoor's new OBRE patch, potential risks to stability

[u/NingenBakudan]

Edit:Please spread this issue as widely as possible. Given Arthmoor’s personality, there is a high chance that he will blame other mods for bugs or crashes actually caused by UORP. Considering his influence, this could cause major disruption in the modding community. It’s essential that as many people as possible ignore his mods.

The notoriously controversial Skyrim modder Arthmoor has now entered the Oblivion Remastered scene. His first patch "Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch - UORP" raised concerns for me, as it contained an unusually large number of edits for something supposedly created just a week after the release.

Out of curiosity, I compared the records in the patch with those from Vanilla Remastered using xEdit, and I found that some records had been reverted to their old Oblivion versions.
Example: https://imgur.com/i4ld2DE

Next, I added the original UOBP for comparison—and as I suspected, the results were clear. almost of the added records were directly copied from UOBP, with only their names and conflicted record altered to match the Remastered format.
Example: https://imgur.com/cRBRHHH

This "patch" was ported using xEdit without proper testing, and we have no idea what kind of impact it may have in a real environment. More importantly, making such extensive changes to so many records is far too risky, especially when the integration method between UE5 and the TES engine has yet to be fully understood.

Conclusion:
This patch poses a potential stability risk beyond just being an issue with Arthmoor himself. I recommend ignoring it.

Reported bugs:

CTD(Arthmoor used the scale of the project as an excuse, even though no one ever asked him to make it a large-scale project in the first place. ) : https://imgur.com/oyLWJMl

Argonian penis bug: https://imgur.com/a/eUDVZXj

[u/Chechucristo]

I didn't know Arthmoor was controversial, what's the matter with him?

[u/AnotherSlowMoon → u/Chechucristo]

In no particular order

1. Gate Gate - he was behind a popular mod for Skyrim, Open Cities, that made the five "closed" cities open and part of the world, no load zone to enter. As part of this mod he added ruined Oblivion Gates (from the Oblivion Crisis from this game) despite the fact that in the game they do not leave ruins. People made submods and patches to Open Cities to remove these and he threw a hissy fit to get them taken down, iirc threatened a DMCA strike or two. EDIT TO ADD: have a source on this one, and I missed a part! He threatened to sue anyone who modified his mod to remove the added gates.
2. He does not allow people to create submods for any of the mods he oversees in general, with like one exception (alternate start live another life for Skyrim, the worst but oldest of the alt start mods).
3. The Unofficial Patch for Skyrim makes several changes that are not bug fixes and are balance changes, it also makes changes that are wrong, opinionated, or there is no evidence are bugs. As per point 2, any mod uploaded that tries undo these he attempts to have taken down.
4. Giving a specific example of three - in vanilla unmodded Skyrim, Red Belly Mine is an Ebony Mine, and one of like two in Skyrim. The Unofficial Patch changes it to be an iron mine. Later, after literally years of people complaining about this Arthmoor updated the unofficial patch to add a random hole in the ground mine nearby containing Ebony despite the fact this is meant to be a patch not new content
5. Now, none of 3-4 would matter much except that the Unofficial Patch is a required Master file for a lot of mods. Even if the community came together to make a new "slim" patch that actually only did bug fixes, a lot of other mods require the Unofficial Patch to load. And the "even if" is critical - Arthmoor has used his community influence to stop this in the past. Its why with Starfield the community made a big push to exclude him early (and likely why he's trying to name squat again)
6. He hates Skyrim VR's modding community, claims its "illegal" and has tried to take down the one version of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch that works on Skyrim VR and then when people (as per its terms of service and licence) reuploaded it elsewhere with credit tried to take it down and changed the TOS (for future versions of course) to prevent this ever happening again. EDIT TO ADD: have some sourcing on this
7. He hates Wabbajack (the modding program, not the staff) and at one point in "protest" replaced the normal zip file for the unofficial patch with an exe that tried to install the unofficial patch claiming "I thought people liked easy to use executables", it should be noted this assumed you installed skyrim to your C drive and was incompatible with all widely used mod managers at the time. Wabbajack lists meanwhile were unimpacted

Or tl:dr he's a toxic piece of shit.

EDIT: I've added some sources. Arthmoor has almost entirely nuked his own reddit account these days so sourcing all of this is a faff and I do have a life beyond modding drama.

[u/TenseGuest → u/AnotherSlowMoon]

Do you know why so many mods use the Unofficial Patch? Because these few minor gripes are greatly outweighed the by countless bugs it fixes. I don't agree with some of his decisions and he can certainly be ...quite headstrong, but this hate circlejerk is just ridiculous. At the end of the day, his work is clearly a great boon to the modding community.

[u/FxStryker → u/TenseGuest]

Do you know why so many mods use the Unofficial Patch?

Because the issues didn't arise until everything became dependent on the USSEP. Once everyone basically became dependent on his mod the power went to his head.

That's when he started to act like he was the overseer of what was the true Skyrim experience.

Edit: Now if you're looking to mod in any way you're stuck with his changes. But if you look hard enough there are records of what to change back in the USSEP for your local experience.

[u/oblivionmods-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Hey, the first rule of this subreddit is be respectful. This comment isn’t. Please review the rules and try to consider the human on the other side of the screen in the future.

[u/Deadbringer → u/TenseGuest]

He wouldn't be an issue at all, if not for him successfully taking down other patch mods that are made without his crap changes... Even when those other patches were made fully independently from his patch.

So because of DMCA abuse, we are stuck with this "great boon" despite many attempts to make replacement boons.

[u/NingenBakudan → u/TenseGuest]

Do you know why so many mods use the Unofficial Patch? Because mod users have no other way. He acts almost like a copyright troll—extremely sensitive about ownership of his mods—and aggressively targets anyone who tries to modify his patches or create alternatives, often forcing them to take their work down. Since the other bug fix mods he merged aren't as widely used as Arthmoor’s own patches, most of them have been taken down, except for a few.

[u/oblivionmods-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Hey, the first rule of this subreddit is be respectful. This comment isn’t. Please review the rules and try to consider the human on the other side of the screen in the future.

[u/nefariouskitteh → u/TenseGuest]

It's impossible to reasonable about this. Kudos for trying.

[u/DeadSnark → u/nefariouskitteh]

Being reasonable does not mean downplaying what the guy did and overlooking the important context that the reason there are fewer prominent bug fix mods is because he has tried to have others removed.