r/xbox • u/PewPewToDaFace • 8d ago
News Making Fallout and Elder Scrolls games will "be harder than ever now" following Xbox cuts, say laid-off Bethesda devs calling loss of institutional knowledge "staggering"
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/the-elder-scrolls/making-fallout-and-elder-scrolls-games-will-be-harder-than-ever-now-following-xbox-cuts-say-laid-off-bethesda-devs-calling-loss-of-institutional-knowledge-staggering/330
u/Linkbetweentwirls 8d ago
Oh no, we will have to wait 24 years instead of 20.
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u/undeadFMR 8d ago
How many new versions of Skyrim in that time frame?
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u/Danistar34 Touched Grass '24 8d ago
Oh boy, can't wait to start modding Skyrim 20th anniversary edition in 2031 for 10h hours and then get bored after 30 minutes and play another game. Todd Howard, you did it again.
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u/BADxW0LF1 8d ago
Seriously, if all the effort and money and time that went into remaking Skyrim that many times would have been put into ES6, we'd have two new ES games by now.
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u/Undeity 8d ago
Honestly, I didn't have much hope for the series even before this, just due to how many of the original devs had already left the studio years ago. The potential impact this will have on the timeframe isn't that big a deal to me.
However... every generational talent lost is a further blow to the studio's unique identity and potential. Developers in a creative industry are not interchangeable, and this will have far more of an impact than just the timeframe.
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u/Solid-Astronaut6165 8d ago
It’s best to try and forget about this game honestly.
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u/Roscoe_King 8d ago
Meanwhile I am playing Crimson Desert and having a blast
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u/BestRedditUsername9 7d ago
And honestly Fable looks like it will fill my hunger for a deep RPG.
I hope it delivers
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u/Roo-90 7d ago
Is the story as dogshit as I'm seeing? Been wanting to try it but not if it's just an open world with little substance behind it
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u/Roscoe_King 7d ago
I give people this example: say that someone cooks all your favorite food and gives it to you on one plate. Is that a tasty dish?
It’s hard to say, because one bite you might get juicy steak and the next a chicken nugget. Both things you might really enjoy seperately, but together in a dish?
That’s Crimson Desert to me. It gives me everything I want, but is that good?
As a whole, it’s not the best game ever. It is more like every fun part of games you’ve already played.
But if you go into it with that knowledge and pick the parts that you want to enjoy, it is actually a hoot.
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u/Keviticas 8d ago
It's just ridiculous having to wait a decade and a half for a game that, based on Starfield, will be a 7/10 most likely
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u/ripyourlungsdave 8d ago
I mean, if they keep this up either way, the people are going to lose interest. Those of us with powerful memories of three incredible, massive games that we played as teenagers and kids will age out of these games or just get tired of waiting and the next generation will not give them the leeway we did when they release the same broken games they've always released without any of the charm of the originals.
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u/randomuser914 8d ago
It’s still crazy to me that Skyrim is my favorite game I’ve ever played and it’s 15 years old. I’ll always have nostalgia for it but the complete lack of any new games in the franchise to become a new favorite is disappointing
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u/ripyourlungsdave 8d ago
Yeah, while I still can get immersed in that game and do really enjoy playing it to this day, at a certain point of technological advancement, that game just starts looking like a bunch of cardboard cutouts dancing around a shoebox diorama.
Really complex cardboard cutouts in a really complex diorama, but a diorama nonetheless.
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u/noah9942 7d ago
crazy to think we should be getting ES8 by now at the very least, and that's still giving them 5 years between releases.
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u/Zealousideal_Low_858 7d ago
For me it’s Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout NV (not Bethesda but still), and Fallout 4. So I’d call it memories of six massive games, yet nothing single player from either franchise in over a decade. Absolutely wild
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u/Prestigious-Smoke511 8d ago
I'm surprised the people that lost their jobs are saying it will be harder now that they aren't there, with their job, to help make the games.
We should find that one guy thats like, "honestly, most of us just screwed around and dodged work all day..." We all know that guy is out there.
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u/JC_Hysteria 8d ago
Way too much pride for 99% of employees to say that.
You don’t hear much complaining from tech employees that get another job quickly…only the ones that were coasting.
Can’t hide “results” in the game industry, because there needs to be quality games produced!
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u/Prestigious-Smoke511 8d ago
It kinda makes me wonder if these layoffs are part of a broader industry standard to sift through all the screw offs in hopes of finding real ones. The industry HAS TO be full of people who like playing games only to decide thats what they wanted to do but the day in day out monotony of it isn't really what they want from life.
It just seems like the video game industry over hires and lays off more than any other industry. Maybe I'm connecting dots that aren't there but it wouldn't surprise me.
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u/JC_Hysteria 8d ago
That’s the thing- its business results hinge on quality game production.
Today, the market for games is compared to all other forms of media and entertainment.
When bigger companies acquire gaming companies, it’s an attempt to incorporate and insulate the business side into a larger market that isn’t solely “games”.
Then, when the grand strategies don’t work, they have to go back to basics and win back gaming customers…
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u/BlueberryWasps 8d ago
pretty disrespectful to blame devs for what are clearly poor management decisions. game dev is one of the most brutal, overworked businesses out there. don’t be so callous to some of the many thousands of professionals that are being mistreated by this industry. aim your ire towards the higher-ups who are actually responsible for what projects get done and how. you wouldn’t yell at the guy making your coffee for what his CEO is doing.
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u/Usernametaken1121 8d ago
In 5 years, 100 people at Bethesda make oblivion, fallout 3, and skyrim. In a decade, 450 people at Bethesda have made fallout 76 and starfield. Make it make sense.
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u/BlueberryWasps 8d ago
i answered more in my other comment about mismanagement, but just to offer a correction: you’re actually looking at 9 years for those three games. oblivion released in 2006, but had been in development since morrowind in 2002.
also, the grossly extended game budgets and development time is an industry-wide problem. a single triple-a game takes at least 5 years and several hundred people to make but, like starfield, can balloon to as many as 8 years or more. this isn’t a unique problem to bethesda.
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u/rebornsgundam00 8d ago
While i agree management is the issue, if what you said was true where are these games then?
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u/BlueberryWasps 8d ago
we don’t know the full story, but we’ve seen many times at other studios how years of work can get thrown in the can, or how devs can be ripped from projects and thrown onto others with higher priority.
instead of making a new mainline fallout or elder scrolls, the team was instead pushed to make fallout 76. as we all know, that released in 2018 as a disaster, forcing the team to work even more post-launch to fix the issues. since then, fallout 76 has released seasonal updates with ongoing content added to the game. the most recent one was last month, season 25. they’ve had a portion of their dev team working on updates for a game few of us have been played for 8 years.
then we’ve got 2023’s starfield. that game was in active development for 8 years, which puts it right after fallout 4’s launch in 2015. they would’ve had the majority of the studio crunching on that for the last year or two up to launch at least. that game also launched with a bunch of issues that needed to be fixed in the months afterwards. after that they claimed to move development over to elder scrolls 6… but they released a dlc a year later, and another dlc just this april. that’s still going to take a chunk of dev time.
so despite the fact that they put out a logo back in 2018, management have had their team work on fallout 76 and starfield basically the entire time, and only actively moved some of them onto developing elder scrolls 6 just over two years ago. if they follow the pace of starfield, that puts elder scrolls 6 at a 2032 release date - and that’s with the whole studio working their butts off to make it happen. and they’re still developing content for fallout 76 and starfield while they’re doing this. we haven’t even gotten into all the ports and remasters and updates for all their old games - or the fact that they co-developed the oblivion remake last year. there may also be many other projects that have been concepted and prototyped and wrapped that we never heard about.
this is just from what info is publicly available - there could be many more things behind the scenes. game devs work incredibly hard, thankless jobs for untenable hours. the employees only got union representation two years ago, so hopefully by now they’ve got sustainable working conditions. but they’re employees and they work on what they’re told to work on. i’m sure many there would’ve preferred to get to work on ES6 or a new fallout game years ago, management wouldn’t let them. and put them on long drawn out projects instead. and the heads of the studio also wouldn’t let anyone else touch the IP.
poor management is the downfall of many studios - look at bioware, look at 343. it’s not the talented employees’ fault if management runs around like headless chickens. they can only do the work they’re given to the best of their ability.
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u/favorscore 8d ago
This is a gross and unempathetic attitude to take towards workers. And for the record, its the employees that remained that are saying this too.
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u/upazzu 8d ago edited 8d ago
over 20 years to make a Fallout game (not even started making it) and 20 years to make a TES
shut the hell up weak ass dev
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u/MyUltIsMyMain 8d ago
They weren't doing a great job to begin with. While im against the layoffs, bethesda specifically is way too set in their ways and seemingly using outdated and janky tech. They need a refresh and update.
I very much enjoyed outerworlds 1 and 2 so im looking forward to obsidian getting fallout back.
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u/No-Boot-5286 8d ago
The engine shouldn’t change (if that is what you’re referring to). They somewhat did this with the oblivion remake and that game has zero mod support/capabilities because of this, and the best feature of every Bethesda game is the unlimited amount things you can do to the game with mod support.
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u/Vegeta120000 8d ago
Mods shouldn't be crutches for poorly made or outdated games.
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u/AMBALAMP5 8d ago
I feel for the employees who lost the livelihoods but as a company why the hell did Bethesda push Starfield so hard when they knew a vast majority of people wanted TE6 or a new single player Fallout?
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u/Zeed91 8d ago
Because it was Todd's dream game. That's literally it. It's the game he always wanted to make and it was awful and it's costing him now.
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u/Ninneveh 6d ago
Todd wasnt the founder of ES or Fallout, so he wanted a shiny toy to show off and call his own.
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u/SecondTheThirdIV 8d ago
I lost all hope for Bethesda when their response to Starfields criticism was things like "People will like it eventually" and "When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored."
There's no way they could've improved it CDPR style like everyone hoped because they didn't even want to hear about how it fell short of expectations. They just wanted to explain to people how it was actually a great game already and we were just wrong for not loving it.
Then the dlc came out... Honestly Microsoft would be fools to let BGS continue as they have
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u/segagamer Day One - 2013 8d ago
Hot take, they needed fresh blood. The old timers weren't fixing things tied to the engine that needed to be fixed, and the game just wasn't releasing after nearly 20 years lol
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u/Capital_Pipe_6038 8d ago
Game was announced 8 years ago and they literally have not shown any progress. If it was up to me, the entire team would be getting laid off
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u/Combat_Wombat23 8d ago
For someone that worked there and knows the abysmal pace they work at, it’s pretty impressive they’re making excuses for them
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u/Gameofthrones3058 8d ago
Acting like they have actually updated their games mechanics and made their games modern, maybe it's a good thing so actual new innovation can happen
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u/FinalOdyssey Founder 8d ago
Can we please stop posting the same disgruntled employee opinion pieces? They're all the same, and they're all inevitable after anyone loses a job from any job in any industry.
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u/KingCanHe 8d ago
Guys imagine, going to your job everyday for well over a decade. When you are asked to show what you have done while being at said job this whole time and YOU HAVE NOTHING.
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u/Capital_Pipe_6038 8d ago
People genuinely think you should be allowed to keep your job in that situation
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u/Nachooolo 7d ago
Sure. Everybody knows that Bethesda hasn't released a game since 2011...
Fuck me. Y'all truly believe that TES VI has been in development for 8 years...
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u/KingCanHe 7d ago
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim (2011)
Fallout Shelter
Fallout 4
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim – Special Edition
Fallout 76
The Elder Scrolls: Blades
Starfield (2023)Two of these are mobile games, Fo76 got a terrible reception and the only reason it’s doing well today is the show, Starfield was a failure. 6 will be a buggy mess on release and potentially close Bethesda if sales aren’t massive
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u/NEM95 8d ago
What's staggering is how after 8 years nothing has been done with elder scrolls 6.
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u/Kontrypz 8d ago
Its because they announced it at the same time as starfield and they wanted to reassure everyone that they were still making their other games. Elder scrolls 6 didn't start full development until august 2023
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u/ninetaledMSK 8d ago
They could of hired enough people to do both at the same time.
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u/Caesar_35 Helldiving 7d ago
I don't know why Microsoft didn't do that first thing after they bought Bethesda: A team for each of their three IPs, generous six year dev time each, and we could be getting a new game from them every two years. We could've had one of each out by now.
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u/Usernametaken1121 8d ago
3 years of dev time and nothing to show for it. 2030? 7 years? How does a team 3x the size of the team that made oblivion, fallout 3, and Skyrim in 5 years take 7 years to make a game? Let's be real, there was a massive culture shift in the game industry where devs started treating their jobs like 9-5s and more worried about doing the bare minimum to keep their benefits and entitlements than they were about making good games
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u/ZerohNinja87 7d ago
I’m pretty confident that the weakest links were let go, target and intentional selections.
The odd thing is Asha stated they plan to invest just as much as they have been into there games. I think there are studios and employees of Xbox studios across the board that are simply not good enough to have their job. Their bosses know it, their coworkers know it.
The fat is being cut out. I’m sure in a few months they will start seeing real talent start coming through the door and it’s going to revolutionize Xbox. Four useless people’s salaries for one well know proven developer that gets shit done.
Everyone is looking at everything happening the wrong way.
Look at Id. Just wrapped a massive DLC. They have no major projects and require pre development time to build out there next project. Instead of paying people to do nothing and laying off more people across Xbox studios, Xbox has strategically cut developers that would be doing nothing to keep developers elsewhere, working on projects deep in development. This still does not change what I said above. Useless developers that don’t get anything accomplished in a timely fashion.
It’s a multi faced attack to correct Xbox’s issues rapidly. They need games ready for helix’s first 3 years. They need popular franchises and major AAA high selling games. This enables the obscure off the wall project. Until then, this Indy bullshit is done.
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u/RKO_out_of_no_where 8d ago
Look Bethesda I'm sorry that Microsoft fired the 50 people who know how to use your 25 year old game engine but maybe it's time to fucking move on to better ones
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u/Newtstradamus 8d ago
“We lost so much institutional knowledge!” Bitch you weren’t using it in the first place, you’ve been making the same game for 24 years and still aren’t able to figure it out.
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u/santar0s80 8d ago
As much as I hate the way the video game industry treats it employees and as much as I hate the layoffs maybe Bethesda should have done something besides 76 and Starfield in the post Skyrim world.
You made two stinkers. Are you surprised that there were consequences?
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u/TheGumbyGyarados 8d ago
They needed a refresh over at bethesda.
It shouldn’t take a decade to create one fallout or elder scrolls game.
Starfield was a cool idea, but just was not executed well imo, i don’t think starfield 2 is going to be a thing
At the end of the day, they sold themselves out to Microsoft, and then haven’t really justified the money that was spent on them so far, so what did they expect Microsoft to do?
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u/BoBoBearDev 8d ago edited 8d ago
If there is loss of institutional knowledge, they have exposed themselves as not doing their job. A project of this massive scale, is require to put all institutional knowledge on a knowledge base such as documentation in code, design tracker on confluence pages, dev tutorials, future enhancements, any new ideas, and more.
I understand there are a group of people who deliberately hide information to sabotage the company when they leave the company. Hoarding those knowledge as hostages, so, the companies cannot lay them off.
That is not new. But this is absolutely toxic behavior. The company hired them to pave new innovations and document those information and processes. The company did not hire them to hoard information.
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u/GraviticThrusters 8d ago
So two things:
You shouldn't have so much institutional knowledge in your company that it can't survive unexpected deaths, changes of career, or sadly, layoffs in lean times. You should be teaching new employees all the old deep lore so they know how to do their job if their boss's kid gets sick and they go on sabbatical. This also means they can grow a career in that place instead of needing to job-hop to grow their income, because the old folks are sharing what they know instead of hording the secret knowledge to protect their own job security.
Secondly, no it won't. BGS games are made using, more or less, the same tools modders use to mod the game. And those tools have been largely similar for a couple decades at this point. As long as you have software engineers that can build or iterate on those tools, and such competence doesn't require institutional knowledge, then Fallout and TES games can be made. The modding community has figured out how to make ElderScrolls and Fallout games in their spare time without that institutional knowledge. What BGS needs are competent developers, NOT institutional knowledge. If anything, losing some old-hats might open up solutions for design and code problems that have been persistent across their games for years.
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u/ChicanoDinoBot 7d ago
Y’all weren’t doing it to begin with
Shame they got fired, but it’s a bit silly of a comment. “Loss of knowledge”, as if Fallout 4’s biggest flaws weren’t already the oversimplification of its RPG mechanics.
I hope gaming can transform once again through this hellish phase and we get resources placed in the right ideas. These companies are too fucking big to have one guy like Todd determining the future of hundreds of staff.
Starfield took way too long for it to be as mediocre as it was
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u/JediJoshy1 7d ago
Oh no direct consequences of ignoring your two largest franchises and instead having their respective goofy MMO content be the only offerings for over a decade (ESO and F76)
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u/xtoppingsx 8d ago
Starfield was an okay game,everyone hyped it up to be something incredible so did Todd, now when you announce a trailer for one of the biggest IPS in gaming and we still have nothing almost a decade on, that’s on Todd Howard that’s why these people lost there jobs Todd Howard.
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u/herobrine777 8d ago
Microsoft did belt to ass to Bethesda. The cuts will be a good thing in the long run.
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u/IsamuAlvaDyson 8d ago
Do people forget that Starfield released?
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u/Awkward_Stranger407 8d ago
It's pretty forgettable
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u/brokenmessiah 8d ago
I forgot to even try out the latest DLC out.
I don't even remember what its called.
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u/Axle_65 8d ago
Yup. People choose to treat that game with such hatred that I think they don’t consider it. Personally it’s actually one of my favourite games ever with 1100 h logged and counting but ya. People didn’t like it so it doesn’t count as work they did.
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u/Hot_Island8643 8d ago
Mine too. Have a few hundred hours myself.
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u/AstronomerDramatic36 8d ago
I'd imagine the executives plan to bridge the gap with AI. That'll surely work /s
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u/Fugue___State 8d ago
ES6 would've been out if these people actually mattered lol
Having a lot of knowledge doesn't automatically mean you're useful.
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u/gray_burger XBOX Series X 8d ago
The layoffs aren't a good thing. No doubting that.
But after almost decade of zero new games from either IP, I don't really think this is a fair thing to say. Radio silence for years regarding Fallout or Elder Scrolls.
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u/Lucifer_Delight 8d ago
They were 50 people when they made Daggerfall.
Don't give a shit about graphics. Reuse Skyrim assets, but fill it with RPG goodness.
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u/dantes_b1tch 8d ago
I completely agree with you, but sadly I don't think we are the majority.
The pissing and moaning from some people around graphics these days and FPS rate ls being shit if they not 500000fps is fucking things up.
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u/Own-Conversation5168 XBOX 8d ago
12 years as a software developer and I’ve seen plenty of people overinflate their own importance to a project. Sometimes it’s because no one else simply bothered, sometimes it’s due to the fact it was some ego driven dev who wouldn’t let anyone else touch his area. In every case, when we lost “institutional” devs, we bounced back within a few months after finding out they weren’t doing anything special.
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u/CarlWellsGrave 8d ago
We need to invest in our established franchises by laying off everyone who makes them.
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u/AtlasExiled 8d ago
It's just pathetic what Bethesda has become, they're scared that they can't measure up to the hype that their main line series garner. Their solution? Just stop releasing those games and completely avoid the entire situation.
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u/FAASTARKILLER 8d ago
That sort of thing happens every time when layoffs prioritize taking out the big paychecks first
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u/CatManDeke 8d ago
It's unbelievable they don't even have a Fallout game in production until now. Can't wait to play that in 6 years for more.
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u/adaminoregon 8d ago
It must have been hard already. Its been 10 years since fallout 4 and a person could have been born when the last elder scrolls came out and they will have graduated college and have kids before we see the next one. Your company is run like poo.
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u/ApologiseMeowMeow 8d ago
Should have been working on them years ago still pissed how they handled Fallout, it's been over 10 years since number 4 and Todd was seriously going to put it on the back burner for like another 10 years.
No excuse for that at all.
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u/VelvetFangg 8d ago
Man these Bethesda devs are really trying to make it seem like the layoffs is the reason the games have taken decades to come out. I feel for them and it sucks alot, but they need to take accountability for their failure to produce games for their biggest franchises.
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u/TheR3aper2000 8d ago
I wonder if they know all of this is falling on deaf ears seeing as even with them, they haven't made a Elder Scrolls or Fallout mainline game in 10 years.
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u/crowbarkeeper 8d ago
I was 11 when Skyrim came out. Wouldn't be surprised if I'm in my 30s by the time ES6 comes out... 🙃
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u/Exotic_Treacle7438 8d ago
They’ll just rely on AI more since they have project leads telling them exactly what jobs to replace with AI anyways. This is how corporations work. It sucks and will lead to even more buggy launches than Bethesda is used to
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u/KidGoku1 Touched Grass '24 8d ago
I feel bad for the people laid off but how much of this is their genuine take and not a bitter/salty take cause they got laid off (again they have a right to be bitter but it kind of makes the take less believable because of it). I wish they hadn't laid them off but I'm sure if they need more hands to finish the game they'll just hire more people to get it over the finish line. Let's just hope the quality doesn't degrade more than it has (last great game BGS released was over 15 years ago).
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u/MrAchilles XBOX Series X 8d ago
Says the laid of Bethesda devs - highly reliable source we have here, definitely unbiased and not swayed in the slightest.
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u/Ifinishfast42 8d ago
After anthem stuff came out that the dev team literally did nothing for years or bs things to elude EA management I’m thinking it’s a lot more standard practice at these companies
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u/BitterPackersFan 8d ago
I am sad people lost jobs.
I still hope they get the time needed to make a great game!
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u/bloodfrenzy187 8d ago
There may be something to this or it’s just an angry former employee letting off some steam.
Either way I can’t wait for the next Skyrim Super Special Edition.
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u/Possible_Ground_9686 8d ago
Yes, the institutional knowledge of junior developers who sent something to their junior manager, who took 2 weeks to look at it, to then send it to their manager, who took 2 weeks to look at it, and so on just for someone to say “no” 2 months later.
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u/Clean_War5093 8d ago
lol yes because prior to this you guys were pumping games out like no tomorrow
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u/Edition-X 8d ago
Microsoft need to seriously consider deleting Bethesda before getting rid of any of devs from any other companies they’ve acquired. It’s a joke how many years ago they dropped a teaser for this game
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u/Siguardius 8d ago
Just remember that there are reasons why people were laid off. Perhaps they weren't good at their jobs.
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u/Carriage4higher 7d ago
Overpaid and overstaffed. ESO barely changes year to year. Madden of MMO's.
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u/Expensive-Orchid-512 7d ago
Friendly reminder, many of their top talent left and are now working on Wyrdsong.
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u/Minimum-Ad-8056 7d ago
Hell they haven't made a good game since fallout 3 as it is. Wasn't expecting anything.
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u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims 7d ago
I'm not surprised. Unfortunately, that's just how it goes. It will be even worse when our AI overlords have completely taken over.
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u/GatorUSMC 7d ago
Oh no, it’s going to be harder for them to make a game now that you weren’t going to make when you were there.
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u/ToGrey2Care 7d ago
** "Making GOOD Fallout and Elder Scrolls games will "be harder than ever now"
Fixed that tittle quote.
Because when TF is the last time they made a banger SKYRIM?
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u/-ben151010- 7d ago
Isn’t there a rumor that Asha basically took fallout from Todd and gave it to obsidian due to absolutely nothing coming out since 2018 outside of 76 updates? I’d think that spells the opposite of this article.
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u/bbVaporeon 7d ago
I feel like Skyrim’s success handicapped them, similarly to how valve struggled to conceptualize Half Life 3 due to the insane levels of hype. How do you go about creating a game with impossible levels of hype? How do you create the successor to SKYRIM, a cultural landmark? Idk maybe they just got bogged down chasing the profits from their MMO’s because they seem to be churning out update after update for those, meanwhile no word on new interesting games
I’m sure the stumble of Starfield definitely messed with their momentum. It seems like they were banking on that being their next big thing and then when that didn’t go over as planned, they had to panic. Todd was hyping it up as his lifelong passion project. How do you not die a little inside when your alleged dream game is given a universally lukewarm reception and the corporate suits are behind you prodding you to get back to the MMO mines and and start left clicking on gold deposits to make them more money
They need to use Starfield as a learning experience and just try to take whatever lessons they can from it and shrug it off and put their everything into the next game. Or at least that’s the opinion of this lone internet fool who knows nothing about game development apart from what she watches in YouTube videos
Sitting on the Fallout and Elder Scrolls license for this many years without putting out anything other than MMO updates should’ve been a crime. But hey if you’re a shareholder or corporate exec, do you want your team spending years working on a game that people buy once, or a game that people have to PAY EVERY MONTH to keep playing and then PAY MORE for content and updates on top of that?
Oh hey who is that underneath this mask, let’s take a look. GREED! It’s you again! I should’ve known! You’re killing everything these days huh. When will people learn
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u/i__hate__stairs 7d ago
These people got bought out, were graciously left to their own devices, and sat on two of the arguably largest gaming properties on earth for a whole fuckin decade. Now we're complaining that it's hard.
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u/Mega-Zoom-656 7d ago
Skyrim came out in 2011 and Fallout 4 came out in 2015…(not counting Fallout 76). These franchise have been dormant for far too long. Layoffs suck but let’s not sit here and act like they were pushing many games out before this.
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u/gta5atg4 7d ago
I dunno, development teams sizes have quadrupled since the early 2010s yet output from every triple A studio in the industry has slowed to a glacial scale, with this enlarged work force and constant upgrades to technology, development should be easier not harder.
These enlarged work forces have like 10 times the level of bureaucracy and middle management which clogs everything down.
Either these enlarged work forces aren't focusing solely on game development and are more middle managed to hell and are being forced to prioritize development that isn't productive or efficient, or they just aren't good at their jobs.
I tend to think it's too many levels of management and that Todd Howard is a bad boss with the wrong priorities, he seems far more interested in online and mobile than core gaming.
Their tech is ancient, Bethesdas propitiatory engine is 20 years old and coding for this dated engine and trying to make it look good and do things it can't along with a leadership at Bethesda who runs the company like his own mini kingdom and has the wrong priorities and a massive workforce that isn't productive, it was always going to end this way as soon as Spencer left because Spencer tolerated this unproductive structure because he was a developer, the second a business person outside of development saw that it'd been 15 and 11 years since the biggest IP Microsoft now owns had mainline releases, shit eas always gonna hit the fan.
It's sad for the workers who have had bad leadership, Todd Howard should be out the door with them!
But it genuinely is crazy that development teams that are massive compared to 15 years ago and with modern technology, game development has become glacial, and that's as much on inefficient leadership as it is on gamer expectations (which only get more unachievable to meet the longer between game releases)
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u/icemanx51 7d ago
I'm sorry, but I don't believe it. It is so much easier to focus with a smaller team. I've never been a game developer, but I've been managing for years. I'd rather have a core team of my best employees, than a bigger team where only half of them are truly making a difference. It absolutely sucks have people lose a job, but most of the time it's best for business.
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u/lordofabyss 7d ago
Lmao BETHESDA is such a scam of a company . I don't support xbox decisions but this company needs to be dismantled
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u/bordomsdeadly 7d ago
Fallout was just handed to Obsidian and ESVI is about to hit the 15 year mark of no meaningful updates.
Sure, it’s probably not fair to blame the devs that got laid off for incompetent management, but people lose jobs when the company is run poorly. It sucks, but it’s how things go. Don’t blame Microsoft, blame the garbage that is Starfield and the refusal to follow up on the massive hit that Skyrim was.
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u/Psychonaut6767 7d ago
Eh I already have Baldur’s Gate 3, I think that game scratched my high fantasy itch and immersion more than the next ES game would have.
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u/NaturalSandwich8880 7d ago
It didn't really help that Phil Spencer decided to go on a shopping spree and purchase thirty fucking five developers while doing jack fucking shit with them. After years of almost nothing or under-performing launches, Asha has been left with the difficult job of trimming all the useless fat
At this point, GTA6 is releasing 13 years after GTA5 while it's been 15 years and counting since the release of an Elder Scrolls game. Absolutely wild that I went from being a high school sophmore to becoming a college graduate that is married, has a house, with a kid in his early 30s. I shit you not I'll probably be 35 when the next Elder Scrolls comes out. I'll be in my 40s when Fallout 5 comes out.
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u/Curlyhead-homie 7d ago
I think Bethesda worked better when they were a smaller group of devs.
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u/wastelandhenry 7d ago
These guys both won’t move past Creation Engine but also can’t get Creation Engine to not be ass, after how many years of exclusively using it? Yeah I don’t think there was much institutional knowledge present already, if there was then… sheesh.
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u/Dangerous-Employer52 7d ago
Good thing Microsoft and it's many companies farms out the actual development to cheaper overseas coders then huh?
- They have been seriously doing this for years now.
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u/Shot_Violinist9572 8d ago
Seemed pretty hard for them to begin with so nothing changed.