Kotaku has published a report in which some developers at Bethesda accuse the company of having imposed unsustainable cruch periods during the work on Fallout 76, aggravated by an apparently poor staff and project management.
“Nobody wanted to be a part of that project because it ate people. It destroyed people,” said a former Fallout 76 developer.” The number of people who did that project and then left Bethesda is pretty high.”
The report talks about prolonged crunch periods in the months prior to the game’s release, with shifts of 10 hours a day for six days the week before the launch of the beta on November 14, 2018, which as we know was not warmly welcomed for away from the numerous problems present.
In this regard, the report also talks about the testimonies of some QA testing staff, who say that they were often asked to work overtime, even when in reality their contribution was completely useless.
For example, there is talk of how a tester was asked to work on the weekend because the latest version of the game at the time required a fix. The tester would later discover that the development team had not implemented the fix and that any work done on the incorrect build would be useless.
Also, the former QA Testers of Fallout 76 claim that overtime was fairly rewarded and during the shifts “even free pizza was offered”, but that the working conditions were so stressful that the game was not worth the candle.
“We worked overtime, but all the money in the world didn’t matter at that point … When we were working on weekends, they’d get us pizza … It takes time to, you know, get out of a certain mindset and realize, yes, they’re giving us something for free, but it’s not worth it. And it’s pretty much the same with overtime money. Yes, that’s more money. But at what cost? “says one of the testers.
Among the sources of stress for the QA Testers, in addition to the grueling work shifts, there were also the numerous criticisms of the players, with attached death threats, and the constant pressure to be supervised by superiors: there is also talk of timed breaks and employees who were checked when they went to the bathroom.
In addition to the crunch, in the Kotaku report, we talk about how Bethesda has managed the management of Fallout 76 in a far from optimal way, transferring developers from all departments of Zenimax to revive the fortunes of the game, with inevitable repercussions on the development of others. projects like Redfall and Starfield.
Some of Kotaku’s sources claim that the teams did not have a consistent direction for Fallout 76 during its early development cycle. One of them states that Todd Howard was supposed to be in charge of the game, but that he spent most of his time working on Starfield, which reportedly began development after the release of Fallout 4 in 2015.
A source told Kotaku that his subordinates called Howard the “seagull” as he wasn’t actively involved with the project until he “flew later and shit all over the place” causing havoc on the design team. Another source believed Howard was a decent executive producer, albeit with a “bigger is better” design philosophy that sometimes turns out to be counterproductive.
Also according to Kotaku sources, Bethesda’s management had not anticipated the challenges of producing a game like Fallout 76 and assumed that they would assign senior “rockstar” developers with extensive experience in Elder Scrolls and single-player Fallout to the Fallout 76 team. would have smoothed out any difficulty in making a live game, but as we know it wasn’t enough.
In addition to the QA Testing issues, some designers have reportedly raised concerns about issues such as griefing, multiplayer stability issues and mission checkpoints, but explain that their concerns have been dismissed or postponed by management.
In the long report by Kotaku, we also talk about how the Creation Engine did not adapt well to a live service multiplayer game, creating numerous unexpected technical issues. Even the sources of the newspaper claim that in reality Fallout 76 had all the necessary QA Testing and that the problems at the launch were well known within the studio, but that it was simply impossible to fix them all before the game was released. The development team knew that it would disappoint fans and wished for a postponement, which nevertheless never happened.
For the moment Bethesda has not released any official comments regarding the information reported in the Kotaku article.
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