By Ex-Bethesda vice president Pete Hines has disclosed that both he and Todd Howard loathed the mix-ups surrounding titles Bethesda was crafting and distributing.
Hines stepped away from Bethesda twenty-four months back after nearly a quarter-century with the firm, sticking around since before Bethesda even secured the Fallout license and The Elder Scrolls had merely two installments. Yet he served chiefly on the publishing arm, Bethesda Softworks, and noticed that heaps of the publisher’s releases kept being mistaken for the internal studio’s projects.
Chatting with DBLTap Hines remarked, “It drove me nuts when folks assumed any fresh Bethesda announcement automatically meant it came from Todd Howard’s squad.” He went on to say Howard “was equally fed up. ‘Why does everyone keep crediting me for Sea Dogs or whatever?’”
Back in 2001, Bethesda Game Studios split off as a separate division to draw a line between the dev team and the publishing label. “We slapped distinct monikers on the studio and the publisher, and surprise—it still didn’t bloody help. No one ever looked past ‘Bethesda,’ just chanting ‘Bethesda this, Bethesda that, Bethesda, Bethesda, Bethesda.’”
Naturally, the headache matters slightly less these days now that Bethesda Game Studios rolls out maybe one or two blockbusters per decade, so there’s barely anything to muddle. Besides, I reckon the outfit no longer gets applause for id Software or MachineGames’ efforts either, suggesting that acquiring bigger teams finally cleared things up.