From Skyrim Together to the more recently released Witcher Online, modders bringing multiplayer to big single player games isn’t new. Folks spend hundreds of hours mucking about in Tamriel or on The Continent alone, so the idea of being able to do so with a gang of mates has obvious appeal, as much as it can be fiddly to pull off.
A newly announced mod will add multiplayer to Bethesda’s Oblivion Remastered later this year. But this one’s not from your typical group of hobbyists.
Instead, OblivionMP is the second project from ReadyCode, a company who aim to use a framework they’ve dubbed ReadyM to outfit a bunch of big single player games with support for online community servers hosting the likes of player-built “cooperative campaigns, role-playing servers, custom economies [and] PvP arenas”.
ReadyCode co-founder and CEO Julius Kopczewski, a former tech lead at Total Tank Simulator devs Noobz from Poland, says in a press release:
Some of the best multiplayer experiences in gaming came from players hacking things together because they wanted to play with friends. I’ve seen how powerful that can be, but also how fragile it is when every team has to rebuild from scratch. ReadyM offers these communities a solid foundation so their ideas can live longer and reach players across more than one game.
The company’s other founder is Michael Szklarski, a veteran modder and the creator of a GTA 5 multiplayer mod called GT-MP. Over on cursed realm of workplace boasting LinkedIn, he declares that ReadyM is “solving gaming’s biggest opportunity: less than 1% of games have robust UGC multiplayer capabilities, yet those that do (Minecraft, GTA 5, Fortnite) dominate the industry for decades.”
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ReadyCode used their framework to create WukongMP, a multiplayer mod for Game Science’s Black Myth: Wukong. Off the back of that, they company say they’ve now raised $3 million in seed funding from investors such as Sony’s Innovation Fund and Lifelike Capital. Szklarski’s LinkedIn notes that ReadyM’s current iteration includes a “universal data layer” specifically aimed at Unity and Unreal engine games, so Oblivion Remastered’s an obvious next target given Bethesda games are famously fertile modding ground.
Despite that financial backing and lofty goal, ReadyCode’s plan immediately left me wondering exactly how they will make money. Modding, especially of the complex and unofficial variety, usually exists in a gray area. As such, it is tough to monetise without a backlash from players and risks legal action from game publishers. ReadyM’s website makes clear that they want to keep access to their multiplayer mods and the platform which houses them free, but does mention plans for those who own servers via it to be able to introduce monetisation via the likes of “optional subscriptions, cosmetic items, and other community-supported funding options” further down the line.
“We are putting considerable resources into development of the platform and the software development kit and therefore for those server owners that choose to monetise we will be charging a platform fee,” a ReadyCode spokesperson told me. “We believe our value proposition will stack up very well against other options on the market and we hope people will see that value through the quality of the features we ship, the tools that we make available and the support (technical and otherwise) that we provide. At the same time we stand by our statement that the access to mods and the platform will remain free.”
They also emphasised that they’ll “never require anyone to monetise their server” and “will go out of [their] way to give server owners as much freedom as possible when they choose to monetise”. With that monetisation remaining optional, the equation still feels a bit lopsided to me, so I asked if their eventual goal is to primarily be drafted in to help publishers provide official mod support for their games, as Mod.Io have for the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Stalker 2.
“We believe there’s great value in collaborating with game developers and publishers directly,” they responded. “There’s no better way of reaching players than through the game itself and the official player communities. That being said, we have strong convictions about the type of ecosystem that we want to build. We do not want to create another walled garden with paper-thin customization options. Server owners need freedom to be able to realize their creative vision and we want to give them the power to pursue it.”
As to the possibility of legal action from publishers, ReadyM told me they “coordinate closely with the game developers and publishers for the games that we take on”. In terms of their Black Myth: Wukong mod, they claim to have “a direct line” to publisher Game Science and say they were even given a heads up about the game’s most recent patch in advance, meaning they could prepare their own update ahead of time. ReadyCode also made clear that their mods require legit copies of games, and they don’t support pirated copies.
“As you can see, while some global publishers are taking legal action, others see the opportunity in engaging with the creator and modder community and are actively encouraging it,” they continued. “We are doing our best not to antagonize anyone, thus we are approaching those publishers and game developers who are [user-generated content]-friendly first. For instance, publishers like Bethesda have explicit provisions in their game licenses for game modding. At the same time, we believe that as we build our case, others will also see that opportunity. Our model can benefit game developers not just indirectly through engagement but also directly.”
Bethesda’s mod-friendly stance might have made Oblivion Remastered an ideal candidate for ReadyCode’s second multiplayer mod, but it’s a game that’s seen a dramatic slowdown in new mods since an initial post-release gold rush. While a total of 4,063 Oblivion Remastered mods have arrived on Nexus Mods in total as of writing, only 128 of those were released between the start of December 2025 and March 3rd 2026 (the latter being the date I’m writing this). For comparison, the original 2006 version of Oblivion has gotten 198 new mods in that same period. Skyrim’s Special Edition has seen 6,617 mods released on the platform in that time. Despite that, ReadyCode reckon their multiplayer mod can kick off a second wind for Oblivion Remastered modding.
“We have plans in place to help alleviate some of the technical pains that are involved in working with this game,” they told me. “Despite containing in its core the engine for the original game, Oblivion Remastered has also introduced a number of breaking changes that severely fractured the mod ecosystem for this game. We believe our experience with building tooling for creators – software development kits – will help here.
“We’ve seen the same pattern play out before firsthand. [GTA 5 multiplayer mod] FiveM, for example, fundamentally changed what modders could build. There was enough framework for modders to design sophisticated cooperative roleplay gameplay, guild-based systems, PvP/PvE arenas, persistent player economies, markets or entire categories of content that weren’t viable in single-player contexts. We want to fuel the same creative explosion in Oblivion Remastered.”
Beyond releasing multiplayer mods, ReadyCode have also announced a plan to launch a partnership program this year. They will “support existing grassroots multiplayer modding teams” by “offering shared standards, tooling and visibility while allowing teams to retain their independence and creative direction”. The company’s press release cited Skyrim Together directly as an example of the sort of project they hope to get on board as partners.
I asked what pick up to the partnership program they had seen. Specifically, whether the Skyrim Together team had signed up. “It’s fair to say that our partnership program is at the early stages of planning,” ReadyCode said. “We’re in discussion with a couple of mod teams, however Skyrim Together is not yet one of them. We want this partnership to truly be a ‘no strings attached’ proposition. Modding teams are passionate communities with established identities and player bases and we don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression that we’re trying to impose anything on them. We are fortunate enough to have considerable infrastructure at our disposal and we think that it could be put to good use not just for games that we support, but also for other multiplayer modifications.
Given many players and creators, especially those surrounding Bethesda games, have historically resisted attempts by publishers to formalise and monetise the mod scene, ReadyM’s plans look like a tough sell to me. Then again, while it’s different to ReadyM in specifically serving Rockstar games, FiveM’s proven that multiplayer frameworks that start off unofficial can find paying players.
To do that though, ReadyM will need to prove to existing multiplayer mod makers and players that they’ve got value to offer beyond the sort of corpospeak that looks good on a LinkedIn page.
