Bethesda Softworks

Bethesda Softworks
ZeniMax Media

"Sometimes... it doesn't just work."

Founded:	Bethesda Softworks June 28, 1986 ZeniMax Media 1999
Founder:	Christopher Weaver
Headquarters:	Rockville, Maryland, United States
Key people:	Robert A. Altman (chairman, CEO) Todd Howard (VP, development) Pete Hines (VP, PR and marketing) Ron Seger (VP, sales)
Services:	Creation Club
Parent:	Media Technology Limited (1986 – 1999, the previous parent of Bethesda) ZeniMax Media (1999 – present, parent of Bethesda)
Subsidiaries:	Subsidiaries hold under ZeniMax Media Alpha Dog Games Arkane Studios id Software MachineGames Roundhouse Studios Tango Gameworks ZeniMax Online Studios
Website:	https://www.bethesda.net https://www.zenimax.com

"I have never lost so much respect for a company so fast, than Bethesda throughout the whole Fallout 76 debacle."
— YongYea, during his video on Bethesda adding non-cosmetic items to Fallout 76's Atomic Store.

Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland.

They are best known for their work on the critically acclaimed franchises Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, which have sold over 46 million and 52 million copies worldwide respectively.

Since 1999, Bethesda is operated under shell company system; while they're technically served as a "subsidiary" of ZeniMax Media Inc., they have full control over ZeniMax's business decision and used it to host several subsidiaries (such as id Software) as well as doing business under the name ZeniMax while publishing the game under the name Bethesda Softworks. In 2001, Bethesda spun off its own in-house development team into Bethesda Game Studios, and Bethesda Softworks retained only its publishing function. As such, Bethesda Softworks acts as the publisher for all games developed by ZeniMax's development studios. On September 21st, 2020, Microsoft has acquired ZeniMax Media along with its subsidiaries for $7.5 billion.^[1] The acquisition deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of 2021's fiscal year.

Although they started to slowly go downhill in the past few years, Fallout 76 made this downward spiral much steeper, and caused many to realize how badly the company has fallen.

Why They Suck Now

As with other hated gaming companies, they have become greedy (see points 4, 5, 7, 11, 15, and 16 for more info).
Due to them almost never focusing on updating their video game engines (Gamebryo and Creation engines), releasing games before they are ready to be released, and its poor net coding, their open world RPGs are infamous for having tons of glitches and other technical problems, due to the game's worlds being huge, this is especially a problem in Fallout 76.
- Some patches for their games cause them to be even more buggier than before, which shows that they can't be bothered to test the game out before releasing said patches.
- During an interview, their director and executive producer Todd Howard admitted that he was well aware of Fallout 76 (and possibly other games) being riddled with bugs and glitches, but decided to release the game anyway.
- The reason for that is that they know that modders will just fix it so they don't bother, however this backfired heavily with Fallout 76.
Todd Howard and Pete Hines, one of their vice presidents, are both infamous for being fraudulent, compulsive liars (especially the former). As a result of how much they lie, many of their games are falsely advertised.
- Pete Hines is shown to be unable to take criticism, as he claimed that those who criticized Fallout 76 are only wanting attention.
- He is also infamous for being a complete hypocrite, as he claims that they resent being called liars after breaking their promise on cosmetic only microtransactions in Fallout 76, yet they constantly lie and falsely advertise every single game they release.
They have been adding microtransactions, loot boxes, and other pay-to-win features in their recent games, most notably Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls: Blades, even though they promised they wouldn't add them.
The Creation Club feature in Skyrim and Fallout 4 is an unnecessary feature since you had to pay for mods, that are usually downloadable for free, with microtransactions included. This feature was unsurprisingly met with tons of criticism.
They have been caught plagiarizing from a Dungeons & Dragons tabletop adventure game called The Black Road for their Elder Scrolls tabletop adventure game called Elsweyr. The game was ultimately pulled as a result.
They have re-released Skyrim way too many times and almost every re-release has tons of bugs. This can be seen as Bethesda Softworks trying to milk their latest entry of The Elder Scrolls as much as they can before The Elder Scrolls VI releases.
- On the bright side, they acknowledged this and even made fun of themselves by announcing Skyrim on Alexa.
- They even admitted that they're milking Skyrim for money, as Todd said that they'll stop re-releasing Skyrim when people stop buying it.
While The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4 are great games, they were also both divisive among both their communities, as both their gameplay and lore got more watered-down and light-toned compared to previous installments, much to the disappointment of fans. They also retconned a lot of stuff.
Fallout 76 is a massive failure, and was responsible for ruining Bethesda's reputation. Everything related to that game has been one PR disaster after another, such as their merchandise for the game.
After Sony announced they were going to do cross-play with other platforms, Bethesda outright stated that they never planned on having cross-play in Fallout 76, which seemed like they were just scapegoating.
Similarly to Electronic Arts and Activision, they are openly against the recent US bill to ban loot boxes and pay-to-win microtransactions.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood for the Nintendo Switch is digital only, meaning that physical copies are just a box with a download code instead of a cartridge. This prevents people who bought the game on said system from selling or even sharing it.
Their E3 2019 presentation was very underwhelming. Besides Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Doom Eternal, and their new IPs called Deathloop and GhostWire: Tokyo, most people have expressed little to no interest in the other games they showcased.
- During the presentation, there was a small group of people sitting in the front row who cheered and clapped for everything (with one man in particular being by far the loudest), even things that would normally have been jeered or ignored such as a Battle Royale mode for Fallout 76, and a mobile "revival" (more so as a sequel reboot) of Commander Keen. It is not known if these people were Bethesda employees, shills, or just really overly enthusiastic fans.
When they launched Doom 1, Doom II: Hell on Earth and Doom 3 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2019, players immediately found that it required a Bethesda account to play it (it should be noted that both of those games are 20 years old now with Doom 3 being 15 years old). Fortunately, Bethesda said it was an error and eventually patched it.
Despite then having stood up to EA's claims that "single player games are obsolete" and making a video titled SavePlayer1, they slightly succumbed to those claims by releasing The Elder Scrolls: Online (original release), but then only made it worse by the launch of Fallout 76. Because of this, it has lead to some people considering Rage 2 to become the last ever single player only story-based game made by them, since many gamers started thinking that Starfield, Deathloop, and Ghostwire: Tokyo might be released as online multiplayer only games.
They are also infamous for poorly treating and not paying Obsidian Entertainment (a company formed by people from Interplay and Black Isle Studios, creators of the Fallout franchise) due to their Fallout title, Fallout: New Vegas, not even getting a score higher than 85 on Metacritic.
They file lawsuits against others for fairly petty reasons.
- They tried suing Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive just because they believed that a mobile Westworld game that they developed and published was a rip-off of Fallout Shelter.
- They tried suing Mojang, the creators of Minecraft, because one of their games was called Scrolls, and that the name would make people believe that the game was a part of The Elder Scrolls franchise.
They often botch their PC releases, such as when the Bethesda.net versions of Rage 2 and Doom Eternal released without a DRM, allowing people to pirate those games.