The 8-player co-op mod for Skyrim is entering closed beta

Bethesda taking the Fallout series online with Fallout 76 was met with, shall we say, mixed results. Modders, meanwhile, have been trying to take Skyrim online for years, and now it's almost a reality. Skyrim Together is a co-op mod that lets you play Skyrim with your pals, and after a few false starts it appears to finally be ready for a closed beta trial.

"Yep, it's finally happening," reads a dev post in the mod's subreddit. "Soon we'll be opening the doors for our loyal patreons for a temporary closed beta - Don't fear, this will shortly available for all."

The closed beta period will be used to test stability and make fixes, and won't last long according to the mod's developers, with an open beta available to everyone following a week or two later. The mod, when released, will feature its own launcher (Bethesda objected to the release of the mod on Steam). The current cap is set at eight players max, though it's possible this may change in the future. Servers for the mod are currently only located in Europe, but again, this may change after launch based on player demand.

The developers haven't given a specific start date for the closed beta beyond "soon", and to be fair, we first heard the mod was nearly ready to launch back in 2017. Stay optimistic, though—your next trip through Skyrim could be with friends at your side.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.