Industry

Skyblivion team says a former volunteer is threatening to sue the fan-made Oblivion remake

By PPRGaming · November 1, 2026

Skyblivion screenshot of an armored knight with a sword and ornate shield walking toward a wooden dock by a lake, with green hills and trees behind
Image: Skyblivion via Polygon

Skyblivion’s latest obstacle isn’t Bethesda. It’s one of its own former volunteers. The team behind the fan-made remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in Skyrim’s engine says an ex-contributor is threatening legal action over code they wrote for the project, GamesRadar+ reports.

The team went public on X and YouTube around October 30 and 31, with one of its lead modders, Rebelzize, laying it out in a video. After the volunteer left, the team lost access to the original source code repository for systems that were already built into Skyblivion. To keep those systems working and fix bugs in them, the team decompiled parts of that work, and the former volunteer objected.

Names, addresses and €30,000

According to Rebelzize, the dispute escalated into a series of legal threats, including demands for the real names and home addresses of several other volunteers. That’s “something that we are simply not willing to share with somebody that we don’t even know,” he said, calling the demands “disproportionate.” GamesRadar+ says the former modder is apparently seeking damages of more than €30,000.

The team says it removed the disputed code anyway and rebuilt that system from scratch “to ensure a clean break.” Rebelzize says the threats have kept escalating since then. The team hasn’t named the volunteer, specifically to avoid an online witch hunt, and it’s now asking anyone with IP or GDPR legal experience to get in touch through its website. It isn’t clear whether a lawsuit has actually been filed.

Where the project stands

Skyblivion has been in development for well over a decade, and Polygon notes it first covered the project in 2014. Bethesda has been supportive, even sending the team free copies of Oblivion Remastered after it launched in 2025. There’s still no release date, but Rebelzize said in a YouTube comment that the team “will have more to share soon” about its planned release.

PPR take: We only have the Skyblivion team’s side of this, and the former volunteer hasn’t spoken publicly, so it’s fair to hold off on judging who’s right about the code itself. But demanding the home addresses of unpaid hobbyists is a line most people would agree you don’t cross, and the team pulling the code and rebuilding it anyway is about as clean a break as it could offer. For players, the worry is time. Every hour spent on lawyers and rewrites is an hour not spent finishing a mod that GamesRadar+ pegs at 14 years old. The good news is the team still sounds like it’s heading for a release, and the “more to share soon” comment is the first real hint of that in a while.

Sources