Over 182,000 people were playing Oblivion Remastered on Steam within hours of its sudden launch on a random Tuesday

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered has had a spectacular launch, and despite there being no official marketing for the RPG right until its release, it quickly surged beyond 182,000 concurrent players on Steam.

While the remastered RPG had been rumored for some time, yesterday's big reveal stream marked the first public acknowledgement of it from developers Bethesda and Virtuos. Plans for the game to be shadowdropped were included amongst the prevalent rumors, to the point that its sudden launch yesterday wasn't an enormous shock, but its player count still proves how popular it is when it has the power to make fans everywhere drop everything in order to play.

With no official buildup, Oblivion Remastered launched on a random Tuesday when a lot of people were still at work, and despite that, it surpassed 70,000 concurrent players in its first hour according to SteamDB – something which also makes me rather envious of some people's internet speeds. This thing is a whopping 125GB, after all.

In the hours since, the RPG hit a concurrent player peak of 182,298, which is seriously impressive. It seems pretty likely that this could increase further when we get to the weekend and fans have more time to play, too, but the fact that it's maintaining over 72,000 concurrent players as we speak shows just how hungry people are for this thing.

It's also worth noting that these figures only account for players on Steam. Oblivion Remastered is also available on PS5, as well as Xbox Series X|S, and as a day one Game Pass release, there's no doubt going to be a lot of people diving in on there, and this is only the start.

Todd Howard points to The Elder Scrolls 6 as Bethesda reveals Oblivion remaster: "Obviously we're working on the sixth chapter here."