Controversy Clocking Episode 10: Bethesda's Downward Spiral

Bethesda Softworks has held popularity in the gaming industry for a while now, their first mainstream hit being The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in 2006, but like many companies in the current generation of gaming, it seems they’re slowly succumbing to some of the worst business practices in the industry. It can be argued that Bethesda has been going downhill since 2015 when a controversial move to place paid mods onto Steam was met with an enormous community backlash. The paid mods were quickly retracted from the workshop which speaks volumes of the PC crowd’s ability to spark change in attitudes from developers.

The second strike came soon after Fallout 4 was released; while the game achieved decent reviews and strong sales, the more long-standing fans of the franchise (myself included) were very disappointed at how the game streamlined the role-playing mechanics on top of having some lacklustre writing. When compared with Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas and the older isometric titles, Fallout 4 simply wasn’t a role-playing title; it was a competent shooter with shallow elements of player choice and little of substance in its open world. At the very least, the game was still open to modding but most ended up returning to New Vegas because of its larger substance for expansion. Even seven years on, modders continue to work on Obsidian’s title; The Frontier, one of more ambitious full-game conversions is set for release within a year or so. On top of that, Bethesda has been rather restrictive of the Fallout license lately, refusing to lend it out to Obsidian or any other RPG developer who could take the series back to its choice-driven roots. Bethesda also made headlines for the wrong reasons when it changed its review policy in 2016, giving out its games to reviewers just one day before release, meaning they wouldn't have time to give a reasonable impression.

But in 2017, Bethesda really went off the rails, making moves that disappointed its fanbase immensely. The company’s E3 conference this year was drab and uninteresting, an indication of things to come. Dragging Skyrim out after six years was underwhelming at best, but it was Creation Club, Bethesda’s second attempt at paid mods, that set off their downward trajectory. Fallout 4 reviews on Steam plummeted to overwhelmingly negative after Bethesda introduced its microtransaction system, which required a 2GB patch. Many players were quick to state their anger at Creation Club and the modding community felt cheated; after years of fixing Bethesda’s games and producing content for free, the company now wishes to split their efforts and monetise something which has been a cornerstone to the company’s success. The launch of Creation Club was a disaster, offering horribly basic mods which can easily be downloaded for free on the Nexus among other sites. The vitriol against paid mods has been so strong that one user made a mod that removes creation club news from Fallout 4’s main menu. Many believe that Bethesda’s Creation Club is only the beginning of planned monetisation, a slow absorbing of all mods and user-generated content into micro-DLCs for increased profits. Time and again, Bethesda has repeated the phrase: “It isn’t paid mods” but there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary and the way they’re handling the backlash is causing even more anger from fans.

Where does Bethesda go from here? Do we put the blame on them as a game studio or their larger owner ZeniMax Media for falling into the same greedy practices that plague the industry? One by one, the big developers seem to be falling prey to the profit driven demands of game production. Arguably the best thing to do is pull the plug on Creation Club completely, reopen the Fallout franchise to Obsidian and pledge to both update their development engine and do better when it comes to game engines and overall polish in the games they produce. This would reassure their fans while also working to restore their damaged reputation as a company. If not, they may end up joining the ranks of other disliked companies whose titles, while well-produced are viewed with scepticism.