Oblivion Remastered Still Suffering Performance Issues Amid Fallout Announcement

Published Jul 18, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT James Lucas is an Executive Editor at TheGamer who has worked in professional journalism since 2018. A Newcastle University graduate with a degree in Journalism, Media, and Culture, they have written hundreds of guides, news stories, and original reports, with bylines in IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, sourcing interviews with studio heads, legendary industry figures, prominent actors, and more. An expert on FPS games, Soulslikes, RPGs, and survival horror, James has intimate knowledge of a wide variety of titles, providing in-depth coverage and exclusive profiles. Some of the games they have extensively covered include: Half-Life 3, Counter-Strike, Elden Ring, and Fallout. They pride themselves on their consistently thorough research, leveraging nearly a decade of industry experience. You can reach them at James.t@thegamer.com Bethesda just confirmed the rumors that Fallout 3 and New Vegas are being remastered, and while I understand the temptation to get swept up in the hype after more than a decade without a traditional Fallout game, I wouldn't get too excited just yet. Lest we forget the sorry state that Virtuos left the Oblivion remaster in. It has been over a year since the last Oblivion Remastered update—which was pushed live on July 9, 2025. The patch fixed an extensive list of quest, audio, performance, UI, gameplay, and system bugs, while ironing out some of the known crashes. It was promising given the usual Unreal Engine 5 hiccups that plagued the PC port, but then updates came to a complete halt. Performance is still notably sluggish to this day, and it’s not like the community has kept quiet about it. The Steam forums actively warn people away from buying the game, social media is littered with posts asking if the performance has improved yet—to which they’re met with a disappointing ‘no’—while many of the reviews on Steam, which have dragged its recent score down to ‘Mixed’, call on Virtuos directly to fix the game. Granted, we don’t know who is developing the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters, but it’s likely that Virtuos will continue collaborating with Bethesda after the enormous success of Oblivion. For one, it has already laid the groundwork for remastering Gamebryo games, but more importantly, BGS is juggling The Elder Scrolls 6, Fallout 5, and post-launch Starfield support, while Obsidian Entertainment is busy working on a brand-new Fallout game. That leaves Virtuos to take the lead, but if that’s the case, the Fallout remasters risk running into the same exact problems as Oblivion. The Remasters Will Be Much Harder To Mod Performance aside, there's another crucial issue to consider—modding. Bethesda games thrive because of their communities, boasting some of the biggest mod scenes in all of gaming, but Oblivion Remastered was significantly harder to mod than the original 2006 title because of the dual engine approach. It’s hardly surprising that Oblivion Remastered has sunk to a 24-hour concurrent peak player count of just 1,622 in a year, whereas Skyrim Special Edition continues to soar with peaks of over 30,000 players. Returning to Fallout 3 and New Vegas all these years later with a current-gen face-lift and some quality-of-life improvements, finally bringing parity to the PlayStation ports and addressing some of the problems on PC, sounds incredibly promising on paper. But considering Virtuos’ track record so far, and the likelihood of it taking the same Unreal Engine 5 approach, it’s worth being a little skeptical when it comes to future projects. No official mod support, performance issues, and abandoning the games when they still need a little more TLC—that's what a Fallout remaster really means right now. Released October 28, 2008 ESRB M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs Developer(s) Bethesda Game Studios Publisher(s) Bethesda Softworks Engine Gamebryo Franchise Fallout