When Bethesda launch The Elder Scrolls Skyrim: Special Edition, the long awaited remaster of Skyrim, they will be making a rather gracious gesture to their customers on PC by giving them a copy of the new game for free- as long as they already own Skyrim and all of its DLC, that is.
There have been some questions about how that would work, and Bethesda’s Pete Hines took to Twitter to clarify some doubts that some people have had- he confirmed that Skyrim Remastered on PC will basically be an entirely separate game, showing up separately in a player’s Steam library, with its own separate Achievements, Creation Kits, and the like. He also confirmed that on PC as well, save files will not be transferring over from the old game to the new (though he mentioned there might be ways to manually do it).
Finally, for Xbox players wondering why they can’t yet pre-order the game digitally from Xbox Live (given that the game is already up for the PS4) – well, Hines doesn’t know. He actually isn’t sure why the pre-orders are not available already, which seems to imply that it should be up as far as Bethesda are concerned. Maybe the hold up is on Microsoft’s end?
no. it's a separate title with separate achievements, creation kit, save games, etc.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) August 1, 2016
I explicitly said it wasn't supported. On PC I'm sure there's a way to manually move them. Whether they'd work…?
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) August 2, 2016
I don't know. I'm not sure why it isn't up already
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) August 5, 2016
it doesn't do a thing to the current game. There is no "update" to the current game. It's a new game in library
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) August 4, 2016
