Reports about the specific affects Microsoft’s mass layoffs are having on studios like Obsidian and id Software keep rolling out. Elder Scrolls 6 makers Bethesda are no different, with staff saying that the cuts there have not just tanked morale, but let to worry about the fantasy RPG’s development endinbg up a longer and more painful process as a result.
“Their loss will have a substantial and cascading effect on the game and morale of this studio,” one Bethesda staffer told IGN of the layoffs at the studio, while another emphasised that folks in various disciplines from programming to art have been let go.
In terms of specifics regarding how the cuts will cause problems in making TES VI, another Bethesda developer told IGN that staff at the studio “fear that we are going to be replaced by cheaper, contracted labor, or we will hire folks to replace them that will need to be onboarded (our tools are proprietary, other devs aren’t going to know how they work) resulting in more delays, and we’ll need to crunch to make up the time.” Naturally, morale at Bethesda’s reportedly hit rock bottom. “We were already running a tight ship and are worried about this delaying the game,” one staff member put it.
The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced all the way back in 2018 via a now infamous short clip of a coastal landscape. Updates since that point have been rare as Bethesda concentrated in getting Starfield out of the door and subseqentely have begun to really get cracking on TES VI. “It’s progressing really well,” Todd Howard said late last year, not too long after saying it’s “still a long way off”.
Pumping out games in big series like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout faster has become one of Microsoft’s main goals alongside these latest layoffs, hence Avowed developers Obsidian beingput back to work on Fallout. Whether that’s actually achievable while keeping the quality high very much remains to be seen.