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Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99View PC Gaming Show Summer Game Fest Dune: Awakening Elden Ring: Nightreign Recommended reading Credit where it's due: Bethesda is being admirably normal by letting modders carry on with their competing Oblivion remaster The Elder Scrolls Modding turf war erupts as 'notoriously controversial' dev puts out an Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch one week after the game came out [Update: Modder responds] The Elder Scrolls I don't want a Morrowind remaster, I want Bethesda to write a fat cheque for the OpenMW team The Skyblivion and Oblivion Remastered romance continues to blossom, as Bethesda invites the modders to its studio for tea and sweetrolls Oblivion Remastered doesn't officially support mods, but the mods are rolling in anyway The Elder Scrolls Modders have torn apart Oblivion Remastered and found 'potential' for proper modding, but without tools from Bethesda we'll need 'a lot of reverse engineering work… before modding can be fully realised' The Elder Scrolls Bethesda remembers it just released an Elder Scrolls game, announces gameplay-focused Oblivion patch that addresses about 5% of player complaints With Oblivion Remastered's first patch looming, I wish Bethesda had taken a leaf from CDPR's book and straight-up incorporated popular mods at launch Joshua Wolens 10 June 2025 Gotta be better than reinventing the wheel, no? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Bethesda) You know what? You gotta give Bethesda credit: the tack it takes with modders is a breath of fresh air compared to, well, pretty much every other big games company out there. Where, say, Nintendo is liable to send in a detachment of mercenaries to damnatio memoriae you and everyone you've ever loved if you even think about Link in a copyright-infringing way, Bethesda is inviting people whose mods are basically a direct competitor to its own latest product round for tea and sweetrolls. It's great stuff, and shows an understanding that modders aren't a cabal of thieves out to steal your IP—they're the most dedicated fans you've got. But as Oblivion Remastered gears up to release its first patch tomorrow after a month and a half of 'not much' from Bethesda itself, I can't help but think it might have been well-served to take a leaf out of another dev's book: CD Projekt Red's. (Image credit: CD Projekt) When CDPR decided it was gonna next-gen up The Witcher 3, it went out and deputised some of the game's most popular modders to just make their creations part of the game itself. The list wasn't expansive—CDPR wasn't out to create a Wabbajack overhaul for its own game—but it incorporated some key tweaks, fixes, and polish that had proven popular in the game's community and that CDPR, I have to assume, quite liked itself. Visual fixes from the Nitpicker's Patch, new textures from The Witcher 3 HD, world map fixes from, uh, World Map Fixes—CDPR went ahead and rolled 'em all in, with the authors' permission. Related articles Credit where it's due: Bethesda is being admirably normal by letting modders carry on with their competing Oblivion remaster Modding turf war erupts as 'notoriously controversial' dev puts out an Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch one week after the game came out [Update: Modder responds] I don't want a Morrowind remaster, I want Bethesda to write a fat cheque for the OpenMW team And, you know, I think if Bethesda and Virtuos had taken a similar approach with OG Oblivion's rippling library of mods I wouldn't be quite as underwhelmed by Oblivion Remastered's first patch. With such a long wait between release and any communication from Bethesda, I admit my imagination ran away with me. I was hoping for tweaks to the game's onerous inventory system—maybe categories, or more shortcuts, or sorting by type—as well as the ability to delete unused spells, and a Goldilocks difficulty between Adept (incredibly easy) and Expert (absurdly hard). Hell, I'd be pretty happy if the game just saw its way to showing me my current encumbrance when I was looting. (Image credit: Future) Bethesda didn't announce any of that. Fair enough. Making games is hard, and making games that are actually a very old game wrapped in a thick UE5 outer layer is probably even harder. But the thing is, all those changes were already made to Oblivion a very long time ago: DarNified UI and other mods have totally overhauled Oblivion's UI for the better, there are mods to delete old spells and useless inventory items, and more mods to tweak the difficulty and level scaling than it's possible to name (though Oscuro's Oblivion Haul was the most famous when I was a lad). There's such a vast ocean of fan-made stuff for Oblivion that it feels like a waste to leave it all on the shelf while everyone shifts over to the remaster. And while it's not just a matter of plugging them in and hitting go—making Oblivion mods play with UE5 is an ongoing effort by the community—I have to imagine it'd be easier for the devs to seize on and adapt that pre-existing work than to gin up entirely new stuff from scratch. (Image credit: Bethesda) But I'm getting out over my skis with that supposition, I guess. The thing is, a lot of the problems I have with Oblivion Remastered are problems I had with Oblivion, and they've been solved by dedicated fans in the last near-20 years. Especially with modding seemingly "unsupported" in Oblivion Remastered, it would have been at the very least a nice tip of the hat to the folks that kept the game alive all this time. I wish Bethesda had pulled a CDPR and brought some of those things in from the cold rather than deciding to reinvent all those wheels itself. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Oblivion console commands: Cheats new and old Oblivion lockpicks: Where and how to use them Oblivion vampirism cure: Rid yourself of the affliction Oblivion thieves guild: How to join the crew Oblivion persuasion: Master the minigame Oblivion Remastered The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Joshua Wolens Social Links Navigation News Writer One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Credit where it's due: Bethesda is being admirably normal by letting modders carry on with their competing Oblivion remaster Modding turf war erupts as 'notoriously controversial' dev puts out an Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch one week after the game came out [Update: Modder responds] I don't want a Morrowind remaster, I want Bethesda to write a fat cheque for the OpenMW team The Skyblivion and Oblivion Remastered romance continues to blossom, as Bethesda invites the modders to its studio for tea and sweetrolls Oblivion Remastered doesn't officially support mods, but the mods are rolling in anyway Modders have torn apart Oblivion Remastered and found 'potential' for proper modding, but without tools from Bethesda we'll need 'a lot of reverse engineering work… before modding can be fully realised' Latest in RPG 'It's the year of Obsidian': The Outer Wilds 2 game director says the studio isn't worried about releasing another RPG in the same year as Avowed After a weekend packed with game reveals, I can't stop thinking about Clockwork Revolution's time-traveling shenanigans The Outer Worlds 2 game director says its writing has a 'less silly, darker tone' than the first game I couldn't picture how Death Howl, a soulslike deckbuilder, could possibly marry the two genres—until I played its Steam Next Fest demo Persona 4 Revival finally has the chance to fix its terrible dungeon design Post-Larian Wizards of the Coast threatens us with more 'CRPGs that are going to be as serious as BG3' Latest in Features After a weekend packed with game reveals, I can't stop thinking about Clockwork Revolution's time-traveling shenanigans The 10 best games of Summer Game Fest 2025 Persona 4 Revival finally has the chance to fix its terrible dungeon design 'Sheer practice and willpower': Real-life telekinetic heroine PerriKaryal beat Elden Ring's bosses by thinking about a cricket jumping and twitching her inner ear, and Nightreign is next Dune: Awakening review-in-progress: Fun in the sun I love Hideo Kojima's games, but last night's fawning over his genius from Geoff Keighley and the Death Stranding 2 cast got me the opposite of hyped HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I've held in these hands Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I've tested Kinesis mWave keyboard review MSI MPG 322URX gaming monitor review Nothing Ear (a) review Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG gaming monitor review Corsair Nautilus 360 RS review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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