March 2026 would be a “fitting” Skyblivion release window, says former dev who called making 2025 “unachievable”

A former developer on massive Elder Scrolls mod project Skyblivion who called its current 2025 release goal “unachievable” has suggested March 2026 as a “fitting” release window for the task of remaking Oblivion in Skyrim’s engine.

Around the time of the mod’s most recent showcase, ex-Skyblivion level and world designer Dee Keyes put out a tweet accusing its project lead and implementation lead of rushing the mod out the door to meet a 2025 release goal that Keyes dubbed “pointless and unachievable”. The modder also accused the pair of mismanaging the project by not keeping up communication between leads and other developers in terms of key decisions. Keyes’ claims and very public split from the Skyblivion team naturally led to questions being asked of the remaining Skyblivion devs, with the mod’s comms lead telling fans: “Our aim is that it will be by the end of the year, if we as a team decide that it isn’t we will be sure to share that.”

Speaking in an interview that’ll be arriving in video form on RPS sister site Eurogamer’s YouTube channel soon, long-time Skyblivion dev Keyes has now shared more about what he considers a reasonable release timeline for the mod, as well as his reasons for airing his concerns in the very public fashion he did. Asked what he’d consider a reasonable release goal for the mod in terms of avoiding crunch, Keyes said the following:

Whenever I wanted to delay, I wasn’t even thinking of a year. I was thinking of a handful of months [extra]. Personally, I would love to see, this is just me wishing, but I would love to see March 2026 because that would make [it] the 20th anniversary of Oblivion. It’d be a nice fitting release date, I think. That would give an extra three months and that’s like gold to us [developers]. So, I definitely feel like early 2026 would be nicer on the developers. But yeah, I’m on the outside now.

Given the strength of the language Keyes used when dismissing 2025 as an ideal release goal, I’m a tad surprised he reckons a few more months would be all it’d take to polish Skyblivion to a satisfactory degree. That said, the dev had made clear he was only pushing for extra polishing time, rather than a longer delay that might lead to feature creep.

As for whether making the 2025 release goal was something that other Skyblivion devs were worried about, Keyes said: “I think it was definitely a concern a number of people had. Quite a few of them were leads as well, but I noticed that just for some reason, nobody was saying it. It was just more of like sort of a heavy feeling that was surrounding a lot of developers. And I’m always kind of the, for lack of a more elegant term, sometimes a bit of a shit stirrer. If nobody’s saying anything, I’m going to try and get people to say something, because I hate miscommunication. It can ruin so many things.”

In terms of corner cutting, the dev said his concerns stemmed from the idea that “if we’re putting out assets or environments that don’t even look as good as Oblivion, we’re not living up to the whole point of the project”.

Elsewhere in the interview, Keyes dismissed the official Oblivion Remaster as a factor in any desire to make sure Skyblivion releases in 2025. On the other hand, he suggested that The Elder Scrolls 6 is a release that could have consequences for Skyblivion, since it might lead to questions about starting from scratch in that game’s engine. Though unless Bethesda suddenly push the big TES VI go button soon, odds are that won’t be an issue – in 2023, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer estimated that the next numbered Elder Scrolls won’t launch before 2028.

Despite no longer being part of the mod’s team, Keyes was also clear that he’s hoping its release will go positively, whenever it comes. The modder said he hopes Skyblivion’ll avoid major bugs at launch. “I do genuinely believe people are going to absolutely love what they’re playing,” he continued. “It’s going to feel like a very unique thing they’re playing because very rarely do you get to play something that’s in production for this long. Not because of any development hell, but because they just wanted to take that amount of time to really focus on every detail.”

We’ve reached out to the Skyblivion team for comment.

If indeed Keyes is right to claim that a lack of communication has plagued Skyblivion, here’s hoping that its remaining devs can stay on the same page from here on out. The rest of us won’t know how much time it ideally needed in the oven until we’ve got our hands on it, but with a volunteer project that’s been in the works this long, I’m crossing my fingers that the modders produce a game that lives up to their own expectations.