As Skyblivion nears release, a former volunteer is trying to sue those still working on it

Skyblivion, an ambitious mod aiming to recreate all of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion within Skyrim's game engine, has run into a new legal challenge after over a decade of volunteer-driven development. Surprisingly, these legal troubles don't stem from Bethesda Game Studios or Microsoft, but a former volunteer.

On Oct. 30, the Skyblivion team took to X and YouTube to explain that a former volunteer on the project is attempting to sue the others working on it. That unnamed volunteer allegedly took issues with the team's "decompilation of parts of their work" after they left, although those still working on Skyblivion believed that this was necessary to "maintain functionality and fix issues in systems already built into the project after access to the original source code repository was revoked."

As Skyblivion neared completion, the legal threats escalated, and they even demanded the real names and addresses of others working on the project. While the code under dispute was ultimately removed from Skyblivion by those still on the project, that former volunteer is still pursuing legal action. As such, the remaining modders decided to update fans on the situation and even ask if any of them would want to volunteer their legal skills to help address this.

The roots of Skyblivion go back over a decade ( Polygon first wrote about it in 2014 ). Since then, the ambitious total conversion mod has slowly been built up by a large team of volunteers who have come to and left the project over that time.

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