At its release in 2018, the MMO was Fallout 76 in a technically poor and unfinished condition. The sources of a Investigation report of the website Kotaku now suggest that this was a problem with announcement.
Interviews with current and former employees of Bethesda and parent company ZeniMax are now set to reveal a development process that has been severely hampered by poor leadership, long-term crunch, and internal rivalries.
The main allegations
Kotaku says it spoke to 10 ex-Bethesda and ZeniMax employees who were either directly involved in the development of Fallout 76 or were familiar with the circumstances.
All respondents wanted to make their statements only under the condition of anonymity. This is because they signed non-disclosure agreements when they left the company and now fear that ZeniMax’s influence in the industry could prevent them from being hired elsewhere.
Podcast
Crunch – Worked broken out of passion
Brutal crunch with bad pay
Speaking to Kotaku, a few QA testers shared their experiences with ZeniMax management and how it regularly required QA to work overtime. In the months before the release on November 14, 2018, it was completely normal for the testers to work six days a week and ten hours a day.
The release of Fallout 76 didn’t seem to put an end to these troubled hours of work. Rather, this phase brought new problems with it. QA testers were now tasked with working around the clock on bug reports from frustrated players and faced constant abuse.
Some employees are said to have received death threats. An ex-employee wants to remember a particularly bad bug report, which said:
I’ll take a gun, go to the QA department and shoot them all
The testers are said to have found peace only after they left the Fallout 76 team. In an internal chat group, former members are said to have reported great relief after leaving the project.
According to the QA testers, most of whom worked as temporary workers, despite the adverse working conditions, only one low hourly wage
paid. The permanent employees should only have gotten a little more.
Instead, the management tried to motivate the QA employees with small bonus payments and free pizza, for example when they were called to unscheduled weekend work. However, this was not nearly enough to offset their working conditions, as one of the interviewees reports:
I mean we got overtime but all the money in the world didn’t matter at that point… If we worked weekends they would get us pizza… [Es] takes time to get out of that mindset and realize yes they are giving us something for free but its not worth it. And so it is with the money for overtime. yes it is more money But at what price?
In the Europe games industry, too, crunch occurs again and again: As part of our big report, we spoke to many different developers who report similar practices:
Haribo bags instead of vacation days
Europe developers about Crunch
Mismanagement and internal rivalries
Some of the ex-employees told Kotaku that no amount of financial incentive could make up for the physical and mental exhaustion they suffered from the constant, mandatory overtime they worked.
Two sources claim that’s why they sent a lengthy email to Rob Gray, head of QA at ZeniMax, to alert them to the issues. However, he is said to have constantly dismissed and denied that there was any crunch in his department at all.
In addition, there were internal rivalries within quality assurance: Some testers were chosen by the management level as coordinators. Some holders of this merely unofficial title, with no tangible benefits, are said to have meticulously monitored their peers and timed the duration of breaks and toilet breaks, believing it might benefit their careers.
Due to these working conditions, however, not only the QA department is said to have constantly lost employees. Regularly, developers from other ZeniMax projects, such as Arkane’s Redfall or Bethesda’s Starfield, have been pulled and relocated to work on new content after the game’s release.
Fallout 76 is said to have been the reason for the termination for many experienced developers, some of whom have been there since Fallout 3 and Skyrim. According to a source, many employees have developed physical problems, such as tinnitus or back pain. It was also not uncommon for developers to wear a wrist splint.
A former developer summed it up to Kotaku as follows:
Nobody wanted to work on this project because it ate people. It destroyed people. The number of people who went to this project and then [Bethesda] left was quite high.
In the following plus video, the developers of games like The Surge 2 and Fantasy General 2 explain how crunch happened in their projects:
PLUS
22:28
Why does the crunch keep happening? – Europe developers about the stress in the final stages
Poor project planning
As is well known, Fallout 76 was the first major multiplayer live service game from Bethesda, which until then was mainly known for large single-player role-playing games. According to Kotaku’s sources, Bethesda leadership completely underestimated the costs and challenges involved.
Although ZeniMax has many studios with multiplayer experience, such as the developers of The Elder Scrolls Onlinethis is said to have been hardly taken into account in the development.
Instead, Bethesda seemed to believe that filling the Fallout 76 team with prominent developers with extensive Elder Scrolls and Fallout single-player experience would offset the development difficulties. However, this did not come true.
Also, some of those senior developers were reportedly unenthusiastic about developing a live service game at all. Additionally, many of their concerns about griefing, stability issues, and questing were dismissed by studio management, which had a noticeable impact on morale.
According to Kotaku, the developers who came from the Fallout 4 team suspected during the development phase that Fallout 76 would disappoint a large part of their loyal audience.
An ex-employee told Kotaku:
I don’t know how Bethesda made Skyrim. That doesn’t make any sense to me. It must have been like monkeys writing Shakespeare on a typewriter. I don’t know how things can be so messy and people are still able to do their jobs.
Apparently there is no improvement in sight
About a year ago, Microsoft’s takeover of Bethesda caused a stir in the world of video games:
more on the subject
Bethesda acquisition will drastically change gaming
When asked if the acquisition improved Bethesda’s internal work culture, several sources gave only muted answers. According to a former employee, the new owners would trust Bethesda to take care of their own problems:
I got the impression that Microsoft wouldn’t make big changes unless it was necessary. Simply because they are: we hired you to be excellent. And when we touch you, it could be like a house of cards where you… [als Kreative] just collapses.
Bethesda declined to comment on the allegations against Kotuka. We have also asked for an opinion, but have not yet received an answer either. Should that change, we will update the article accordingly.
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