author: Bart Swiatek
Pete Hines: Abandoning Fallout 76 was Never an Option
Bethesda Softworks has never considered abandoning Fallout 76. In an interview for GamesIndustry.biz, Pete Hines emphasized that an accomplished studio can't give up so easily.
IN A NUTSHELL:
- Bethesda believed in Fallout 76;
- Although the game was a failure, the studio never considered abandoning it;
- The company just doesn't work that way and is too proud to give up without a fight.
Fallout 76 was neither the game the fans had hoped for - nor the success that the developers weren't expecting. It turns out, however, that despite a very weak start, abandonment of the production was never an option. Pete Hines from Bethesda Softworks said it himself in an interview for GamesIndustry.biz.
"I appreciate there might be folks who are tempted to throw up their hands and [call it quits], but that's just not how we're wired. We believed in it. The fact that it didn't go the way we expected and it had issues that maybe we should have foreseen and should have planned for doesn't mean we didn't believe in what the game was and could become," said Pete Hines.
This approach is partly dictated by pride. Studio has a lot of successes to its credit and can not just give up in case of failure. In the opinion of Pete Hines, showing that the last word has not yet been said is crucial in such a situation.
"BGS is a team that's made a lot of very highly successful things. Still, in my opinion, they are one of the most respected and decorated studios in the world. There is an element of pride -- not in a 'we don't quit and give up' way, but we need to show and prove that we are going to stick with it, and that we don't just hit some adversity and throw up our hands and go, 'Oh this is too hard, let's do something else.' That's not how we think about things, either as a publisher or as a studio," the developer says.
Although there is a lot of bad news about Fallout 76, it is undoubtedly a title that is gradually being repaired and developed after the release, even if patches do not always work as they should. Bethesda's commitment is clearly visible, especially in contrast to other developers whose productions encountered problems after the launch. For comparison, BioWare did not fully withstand the pressure of the failure of Anthem - the developers did not respond to their fans for weeks and deleted the entire roadmap for the game, without offering any alternative in return.
