During the annual Gamelab event which took place recently in Barcelona, Todd Howard received an “Industry Legend” award. Following the award presentation, he sat down for an extended interview with Geoff Keighley. A whole host of things have emerged from that interview, and one such point relates to Bethesda’s habit of porting Skyrim. Speaking of those Skyrim ports, Howard made the point that the reason Bethesda keeps porting the game is because fans keep buying it.

Bethesda’s History of Skyrim Ports

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was originally released back in November of 2011. Since then, Bethesda have released both a Legendary Edition (including all DLC), and a remastered Special Edition, in 2013 and 2016, respectively. The company has also ported the game to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation VR, and standalone VR for Windows during 2017 and this year. The frequency of the re-releases and ports has not gone unnoticed by fans. Bethesda even parodied themselves during their E3 presentation this year; they played a fake trailer for a port of Skyrim called the “Very Special Edition” which played on Amazon’s Alexa. As it turns out, that port is actually real, although it’s certainly still absurd.

Speaking with Geoff Keighley, Todd Howard made a rather valid point about fan criticisms of Bethesda making so many Skyrim ports. “Even now,” he stated; “the amount of people who play Skyrim seven years later – millions of people every month are playing that game. That’s why we keep releasing it. If you want us to stop releasing it, stop buying it.”

It is a fair point. Bethesda wouldn’t continue to develop and sell ports of Skyrim if the company didn’t expect to make money doing so. There are an estimated 13.2 million Skyrim players on PC alone, according to achievement data tracked by Steam. There are also a further 4.4 million Special Edition players, although there could well be a lot of overlap between the two groups. That success shows no signs of diminishing, either; the game was ranked bronze in the list of Steam’s best-selling games of 2018.