Bethesda's Oblivion remaster passes four million players, breaks series concurrent records

Bethesda finally returned to the Elder Scrolls universe last week with a surprise remaster launch. Arriving after years of leaks and rumors, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered landed as a unique project that utilizes the original Gamebryo engine as well as Unreal Engine 5. The release has proven to be a massive success already, with Bethesda announcing four million players have already jumped in on the remaster.

"We are so grateful to the over 4 million of you that have already ventured into Cyrodiil with Oblivion Remastered. Thank you," said posts on official Bethesda Game Studios social media channels. The impressive milestone has been reached only four days into its launch, which arrived as a shadowdrop following a special livestream without any prior marketing.

Developed in collaboration with Virtuos, the remaster touts massive improvements to the graphics, with every asset being redesigned from scratch, rebuilding the world of Cyrodiil to meet current-gen visual standards. However, aside from some essential gameplay enhancements to elements like combat and sprinting, the original game's core has been kept intact.

The Oblivion remaster has also achieved the best concurrent players record for The Elder Scrolls franchise on Steam. The title's peak concurrent number has reached 190,119 players even prior to the weekend, and might even go higher soon. Prior to that, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim held the record with a peak of 69,906 concurrent players from eight years ago.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is out for $49.99 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. It's also available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscriptions for no extra cost.

Oblivion fans may also be familiar with the Skyblivion community modding project that's remaking the original RPG in the Skyrim engine. Despite the remaster launch, Bethesda has assured the mod's development team that it has no intention of putting a stop to the project, and even sent over some gifts.