No modding tools for Oblivion Remastered, Bethesda confirms

Bethesda’s surprise drop of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered lit the Steam charts on fire, hitting #1 in under an hour. The remaster has launched with modern visuals, new voice acting, and a reworked leveling system—yet there’s one major omission fans of the franchise instantly noticed: no official modding tools.

“Mods are not supported for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered.”

That’s the full, brutal sentence tucked inside Bethesda’s official FAQ, and it hit the community like a frost spell to the face.

For context, modding isn’t just some bonus feature for The Elder Scrolls games—it’s the beating heart of the franchise’s longevity. Mods kept Morrowind alive through Windows Vista, turned Skyrim into a literal second job for many of us, and even let you shoot Thomas the Tank Engine out of a shout. Entire careers were born on Nexus Mods and the Steam Workshop. Bethesda even leaned into this with Creation Club support across Fallout 4, Skyrim Special Edition, and Starfield.

So what gives?

The new Oblivion Remastered runs in Unreal Engine 5, not Gamebryo or Creation Engine, and Bethesda says it won’t release a Creation Kit for the remaster. That stings, especially for console players—Xbox and PS5 users had slowly been getting more access to curated mods via official channels, and it looked like modding was finally being treated like a real feature, not a modder’s burden. This? It’s a big step back.

Image Source: TheGamer

Still, that’s not stopping PC modders from breaking things open. Reddit’s already full of threads where people are poking around UE5 files, and someone even got the remaster partially running through the original Construction Set. That’s wild. It’s not a plug-and-play system anymore, but the modding scene has always been about doing the impossible in between game crashes and load screen haikus.

“The lack of official tools might slow things down a bit, then, but maybe not for long.”

Meanwhile, Oblivion Remastered is still killing it on Steam, it’s sitting at a Very Positive rating right now, with a lot of praise for its new lighting engine and smoother combat feel. Even the classic potato-face NPCs got some love with new facial animations. It’s £50 or bundled into Game Pass—so not exactly cheap—but players seem surprisingly cool with it. Even the infamous horse armor is back, and nobody's rioting... yet.

One crew that’s not panicking? The Skyblivion team. That’s the massive volunteer project that’s been rebuilding Oblivion inside Skyrim’s engine for the last decade. Their response to the remaster was chill: Bethesda gifted them game keys, and they confirmed the remaster doesn’t affect their release plans at all. Respect.

Oh, and while we’re here, remember that Fallout 3 Remastered was part of the same k-word FTC leak that predicted this Oblivion remake? That one hasn’t shown up yet, but let’s just say it’s probably not dead. Oblivion Remastered was also missing in action for years before suddenly launching out of nowhere. It could be a pattern.

At the end of the day, the lack of official mod support is a bummer, but it’s not a dealbreaker. The TES modding community has worked with far worse. We’re talking about people who figured out how to port Morrowind into Skyrim, or rebuilt entire quests because a butterfly flew into a wall. This isn’t new ground—it’s just another puzzle to solve.

And if Bethesda won’t give us the tools? You already know someone’s working on building their own.