There had been rumors for a long time about The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered, as Bethesda had been teasing it, fans had been asking for it, and so on. However, no one was sure when it would come out, and in what state it would be in. Eventually, we got the news from Bethesda and Virtuous themselves, and they decided to not only reveal the game, but also shadow drop it into the world. Yep. They did that. Fast forward a few months, and we’ve heard from Bethesda again, and this time, it was to announce how many people have been playing the title.
As you can see below, The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered has hit 9 million players. Bethesda is clearly proud of that, and it’s something that many would call a success. However, when you dive deeper into things, you have to wonder if this is really a success to celebrate, or something Bethesda is doing to “feign success” and hide its real issues.
For example, on a Reddit thread talking about this, players noted that while the game might have had that many players over time, the game itself isn’t of the quality that it should be. There are plenty of performance issues, regardless of whether you play it on Xbox or on PC. They also blasted the team at Virtuous for not being able to fix things after the game’s launch, with some saying it’s truly “unplayable” at times.
Another thing to note here is that “players” doesn’t equate to “units sold.” After all, the title was on Xbox Game Pass, so that means gamers didn’t have to buy the full title, just had a Game Pass active, and they could play the game all they wanted until it was no longer available on the service. So, you could make the argument that the game’s sales are MUCH lower, because not a lot of people were actually buying it, but more like “playing it since it was available on another, cheaper service.”
The final thing that points to this game’s “middling success” is Virtuous. They were the team behind the remaster, and yet, not too long ago, they had layoffs. Over 300 people in their company got laid off. Granted, only a few were from the team that made the remaster, but considering Virtuous has a “large footprint” in the industry, as they help pretty much every publisher out there, that’s still a lot of people getting laid off after a “big success.”
