New report says Fallout 76 development blighted by poor management and mandatory crunch

A widely derided new Fallout 76 development report from Bethesda has painted a picture of a studio in disarray, as mismanagement, a lack of design direction, and engine issues have created an environment of apathy, confusion, crackle and burnout, and a game that ultimately failed to resonate with gamers.

Announced in 2018 and launching the following year, Fallout 76 – an online version of Bethesda’s beloved post-apocalyptic RPG series – was not well received at launch. Wesley Yin-Poole from Eurogamer itself went so far as to call her a “weird, boring, broken mess” before slapping him with an Avoid badge.

Now a long new report from kotaku – based on conversations with 10 former employees of Bethesda and parent company ZeniMax Media – shed new light on the troubled development that led to such a poorly received game, seemingly doomed from the start.

Let’s play Fallout 76 live – Ian explores Appalachia.

It is claimed that many of the team at Bethesda’s Rockville studio, who are leading the development of Fallout 76, had little enthusiasm for senior management’s desire to create a live-action version of Fallout, after having joined the company as fans of the studio’s single-player games.

According to Kotaku’s report, things weren’t helped by a lack of consistent direction from upper management as to what Fallout 76 was actually meant to be. It is claimed that although Bethesda’s Todd Howard was technically in charge of the project, he spent most of his time working on Starfield, while design director Emil Pagliarulo “didn’t seem like he wanted to be involved with the product at all. He didn’t want to have contact with him… or read everything we put before him.”

The problems would have been further compounded by the considerable technical challenges of adapting Bethesda’s single-player focused creation engine for multiplayer. Management reportedly believed that using Creation Engine would be the “lesser evil,” but Kotaku sources say the decision ultimately created complex issues that resulted in substantially increased workloads for both design and quality assurance, employees regularly accumulating between 10 and 16 hours. of work per day. Multiple sources have told Kotaku that crunch on Fallout 76 is mandatory, and it’s said Rob Gray, ZeniMax’s QA manager, has continually deflected or denied that crunch is happening in his department when the issue was raised. by employees.

Kotaku sources say the significant time requirements and technical challenges associated with adapting the creative engine for multiplayer were not only demoralizing, but the main reason management insisted on dropping one of the key staples. from the Fallout series, the NPCs. It is claimed that “almost none” of the designers at Bethesda wanted the game to launch without NPCs, but executive producer Howard refused to budge on the issue until release.

Senior management also reportedly chose to ignore designers’ concerns about other issues during development, including griefing, multiplayer stability, and quest checkpoints.

Ultimately, the development turmoil of Fallout 76 – which would have required Bethesda to pull Starfield and Redfall staff from Arkane Studios to complete, two games that have since been delayed – would have resulted in an exodus of senior developers who had worked on some of Bethesda’s biggest titles, including Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

As to whether senior management at Bethesda learned any lessons from the development of Fallout 76, Kotaku sources remained cynical. “It would be great if something like [Activision Blizzard worker advocacy group] A better ABK existed for Bethesda,” one person said, “but everyone is terrified…because [Bethesda] HR is super ruthless.” And things wouldn’t have gotten any better under Microsoft, which continues to emphasize a “hands off” policy when it comes to acquiring its studios.

In all, The Kotaku Report offers another depressing insight into the inner workings of the games industry, but it’s one well worth reading.