The developers of the acclaimed mod Skyrim Enderal have just arrived in the big leagues

In 2016, a team of modders released a game that developed a game in their spare time with almost universal acclaim – a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim what they called Enderal, with its own search of more than 30 hours with many original dialogues and professional dubbing. “[It’sthemostfungameI’veeverplayedinagamebyElderScrollweeks”wroteourbrother[It’sthemostfunI’vehadinanElderScrollsgameinyears”wroteoursistersite[ÉojogomaisdivertidoquejátiveemumjogoElderScrollsemanos”escreveunossositeirmão[It’sthemostfunI’vehadinanElderScrollsgameinyears”wroteoursistersitePolygon. It is the highest rated Skyrim mod of all time in ModDB, has nearly 500,000 downloads on NexusMods and its own Steam page full of brilliant reviews.

Now, its developers are starting to build their own game. On Sunday, the SureAI team released their final patch for Enderal, explaining that they no longer had so much free time to maintain development – because they are working on “a new commercial project that we hope to be announced this year”.

They left no hint as to what kind of game it could be – we checked team accounts on social media, Discord and more – but it would be surprising if it weren’t based on swords and sorcery, seeing how they’ve been making mods since Morrowind.

Whether you’re a fan or not (I admit I’ve never played), it’s always refreshing to see talented game developers make it big. As you probably know, some of the most popular games in the world started out as mods: Counter-Strike, DOTA and PUBG started as reviews for Half life, WarCraft III and Weapon 2 respectively, as well as people like Dear Esther, DayZ and Stanley’s parable. Developers of popular mods like Darthmod for Total war also entered the industry.

However, these moves don’t always work as everyone expects: developers of Battlefield 1942 I bought the team behind the Desert Combat mod (my favorite) in 2004 to help work on similar themes Battlefield 2, only to close them just before the game’s launch and refuse to pay $ 200,000 due.