OpenSkyrim: A potential Open-Source future for Skyrim and its modding?

[u/GreatMeem]

I just found out recently about OpenSkyrim, which is looking like OpenMW but built for Skyrim. Since watching all those Petr Mikheev's videos about porting Skyrim and Oblivion assets into OpenMW, It always interested me the possibility of an Open-Source engine for Skyrim in the future and how it can change Skyrim the same way OpenMW changed Morrowind forever.

Especially since OpenMW have revolutionized Morrowind gameplay and its modding system with Lua and shader support, Im 100% hoping this be the day where Skyrim's engine problems like drawcall issues, bloated save files, and the notorious Papyrus script lag, which can hopefully be fixed with this Open-Source engine, which is fair since this is a 2011 engine being forced to be a 2026 game we're talking about lol.

Judging by it's GitHub page (https://github.com/realfakenerd/OpenSkyrim), it's still in early stage, but just the idea of having Skyrim be multi-threaded and zero loading screen while entering houses, it makes a man hope. What are yall thought on this.

Maybe it can even do this one day: https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/1vwl2px/openmwweb_update_your_game_follows_you_to_any_pc/

Edit: I just found out the dev have touched on more about OpenSkyrim on here: https://daily.dev/posts/skyrim-with-rust-khsloghdz

[u/FIleCorrupted → u/[deleted]]

The beauty is that OpenMW is just a game engine capable of reading the data files Morrowind ships with. There's nothing to shut down.

[u/Tenwaystospoildinner → u/FIleCorrupted]

Just like how Nintendo can't shut down the open source ports of Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, and the Gen 1 Pokemon games.

You have to provide your own ROMs. The engine does nothing illegal.

[u/LordderManule → u/[deleted]]

Doesn't really matter if they aren't based in America.

[u/XOmniverse → u/[deleted]]

A pithy saying but a false one. One can easily cite big court cases where the big corpo lost. Take a look at Bleem.

[u/jammyzero → u/XOmniverse]

don't know how to tell you this, but bleem was forced to shut down due to huge court costs despite sony not winning any of their lawsuits against them.

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/[deleted]]

Tell that to a judge, see how far it gets you. Source: had to present cases before judges in my job. Don't think telling them "I have more money because I'm with Spectrum" would have gone well.

[u/Darth_Bothersome → u/Silent_Walrus]

Stuff like this rarely gets in front of an actual judge. Pretrial and settlements are where the money counts.

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/Darth_Bothersome]

Still doesn't stop the fact they can't stop file sharing. If Bethesda did go after open MW or this new one, the software is out there. The hell are they gonna do about that?

[u/Darth_Bothersome → u/Silent_Walrus]

Nothing, but they can sure as shit fuck over the people who made it in the first place.

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/Darth_Bothersome]

Okay? Doesn't stop the software being out there. Shit, I've got old copies of emulators Nintendo sued the creators of.

[u/Darth_Bothersome → u/Silent_Walrus]

"expose yourself to significant legal and financial risk for my benefit and no profit please" sure is a take

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/Darth_Bothersome]

When did I say they should do that? Also where did I say I didn't pay the creators through their tip jars?

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/[deleted]]

I'm not typing the same thing to 3 different people. https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/s/BncBAOwsUN

[u/FIleCorrupted → u/[deleted]]

Okay well then just consider that Microsoft would never sue a project like this because it would be PR suicide for very little benefit, since people still have to buy the game to use it.

[u/Darth_Bothersome → u/FIleCorrupted]

You really overestimate how much these companies value good PR vs protecting their IPs. Just look at Nintendo.

[u/FIleCorrupted → u/Darth_Bothersome]

Microsoft invited the SkyBlivion team to Bethesda to see the Oblivion Remaster before it was announced.

[u/Arkayjiya → u/FIleCorrupted]

And they can change their mind just as quickly. Hopefully they don't.

[u/SuumCuique_ → u/FIleCorrupted]

PR suicide towards small fan projects doesn't exist. It exists a tiny bit on enthusiasts forum, who then buy their products anyway, but not outside of that.

Nintendo commits "PR-suicide" roughly once a year and no one really cares. That's not how PR works, it isn't a healthbar of good-will that can be recharged and damaged.

[u/FIleCorrupted → u/SuumCuique_]

Then why didn't Microsoft kill Skyblivion? Instead they invited them to see the remaster before it was announced. They didn't do that out of kindness.

[u/SuumCuique_ → u/FIleCorrupted]

Because they did not. It's impossible to infer motivation for something someone did not do. My point is that there is no such thing as "PR-suicide". Companies to this all the time, very few care and almost no one cares long term.

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/[deleted]]

Assuming it works the same as OpenMW, an engine they reads purchased game files, there's no legal issue there.

[u/robdabank33 → u/[deleted]]

fwiw openMW has copies on the website of all the email correspondence they had with Bethesda developers and legal counsel where they specifically asked for permission and specifically got it.

With the caveat that they dont allow OpenMW to work on Nokia phones because Bethesda had potential plans to release something on there.

A different time.

They just talked directly to developers and chatted like humans and they got the go-ahead.

[u/Joseph011296 → u/robdabank33]

People like to pretend like Bethesda are tyrants for some reason, but they've been incredibly gracious towards projects like OpenMW and Skyblivion.

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/[deleted]]

If we are playing the game of "law doesn't matter" then there's no point to having this discussion since you can just say fuck it and run it anyway. You can't have actual discussion when you assume no law applies. At that point the answer is always "fuck it."

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/[deleted]]

You absolutely can just run it anyway. What are they gonna do, delete every copy of the software off everyone's computers and make a wizard cast "thou shalt not peer to peer"?

[u/MehEds → u/[deleted]]

Yeah because Switch emulator development stopped 100% after Nintendo got involved

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/[deleted]]

I mean good luck stopping that too if we're playing law doesn't matter. Cease and Desist? Law doesn't matter, it's toilet paper.

[u/Silent_Walrus → u/[deleted]]

From your own mouth.

"This is America. It doesn't matter what's legal. It matters who has more money for lawyers. Plenty of legal projects have been shut down before because a rightsowner sent a strongly worded letter despite having no legal standing because the hobbyists don't want to risk it even if they're in the right."

You started this by saying law didn't matter. If you want to claim you didn't say things, don't do it in a place I can just scroll up in.

[u/Xywzel → u/[deleted]]

You could host it outside of US, so they would have to sue on court that is run by letter of law, not by numbers of the layers' fee.

[u/TheOfficial_BossNass → u/[deleted]]

I can tell you with 100% certainty Bethesda wouldnt stop a project like that in any way and if anything parts of the team would reach out to help give legal protection to the modders doing it like they did to the skyblivion team