“Bethesda has always been supportive of community projects like ours, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon,” the team wrote at the time.
The latest “making of” trailer for the ambitious Skyblivion modding project.
Other publishers aren’t always similarly open to competition from fans, though. Nintendo has long taken a legal scorched earth approach to a wide variety of fan games that use its licensed characters or trademarks. And last year, Valve also took steps to shut down a number of fan remakes of its legacy games.
In 2016, Blizzard shut down a couple of fan-run “classic” World of Warcraft servers in the run-up to its announcement of official World of Warcraft Classic servers. Activision and EA have similarly shut down modded servers for legacy online titles.
Some publishers have mirrored Bethesda’s more open approach to modders, though. Sega actively encouraged official Steamworks modding for some Sega Genesis classics released as PC downloads in 2016. And the heavily Halo-inspired Installation 01 continues to thrive with something close to official support from Microsoft and developer 343 Industries, as long as it remains a non-commercial project.
As for Skyblivion, while the project’s last public road map update is months old at this point, the team is still confident it will be able to release a version of its ambitious mod later this year. “We are confident that players will be the true winners, having the opportunity to experience both a community-driven reimagining and a professional, modern version of this beloved game.”