PC football games took a back seat in 2023 as Oblivion’s fresh remaster swept in, pulling over 115,000 fans into Cyrodiil and grabbing Steam’s top-selling crown—football, meet your new boss. Nostalgia clearly scored high, with player counts soaring and even Skyrim getting a boost, despite Oblivion’s technical hiccups (who needs flawless performance when Daedric quests call?). If you want to know which fantasy franchise just tackled the charts, there’s a bit more to the story.
Even as football games usually dominate PC charts, this week’s real MVP is a fantasy classic reborn—Oblivion’s remaster has stormed the field, pushing crowd favorites aside and reminding everyone just how powerful nostalgia can be.
It’s not every day a game from 2006 sends Counter-Strike 2 to the bench, but here we are: Oblivion’s facelift drew over 115,000 concurrent Steam players just hours after launch, eventually peaking at a whopping 216,784. Steam’s top-seller charts? Oblivion sat proudly at number one, and even held its ground in the face of Game Pass competition.
Apparently, over four million players across platforms couldn’t resist a return trip to Cyrodiil. And it wasn’t just the remaster—original Oblivion player counts jumped 113%, as if everyone suddenly remembered they had unfinished business with Mehrunes Dagon. The availability on Game Pass has also made it easier for longtime fans and newcomers alike to jump back into Cyrodiil without barriers.
Over four million players rushed back to Cyrodiil, with even the original Oblivion’s numbers more than doubling overnight.
Skyrim also caught the wave: Special Edition and standard versions saw Xbox player increases of 26% and 28% respectively. Even Morrowind and Elder Scrolls Online enjoyed a small bump, proving the franchise still has cross-generational pull.
Of course, not all was dragon-slaying and cheese wheels. PC performance was another story, with Digital Foundry dubbing the remaster the “worst-performing” of its kind. Players reported brutal CPU stuttering, and even after a few patches, optimization remained more myth than reality. Notably, Oblivion Remastered reached 4 million players in less than a week, an achievement Bethesda proudly celebrated on social media.
Game Pass users got an extra surprise when upscaling options vanished post-update—because who doesn’t love a disappearing feature?
Despite technical woes, players kept logging in. SteamDB showed steady numbers, with more than 55,000 active players days later, and the game stubbornly held a spot in Steam’s top 4. The continuous evolution of live service games has conditioned players to expect patches and improvements, likely contributing to their patience with Oblivion’s issues. Not bad for something that’s basically a nostalgia trip with a fresh coat of paint.
All this happened alongside a complicated backdrop: calls for a boycott against Microsoft due to international politics. Yet, Oblivion’s comeback seemed to prove that, when it comes to gaming, access and nostalgia often win out over activism—at least for now.