After 24 Years, Pete Hine Leaves Bethesda [Update: Will Shen Follows]
After 24 years at Bethesda Softworks, Pete Hines is leaving his post. He now wants to focus on developing his passions.
UPDATE: Pete Hines is not the only person to leave Bethesda in recent days. A similar path was followed by Will Shen, quest designer for Starfield (whose credits also include Skyrim and Fallout 4). He did not retire, however, and joined Something Wicked Games, where he will serve as chief content designer for the RPG Wyrdsong.
Interestingly, Shen's new team will include collaboration with Jeff Gardiner (producer of Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4), Charles Staples (designer of Fallout: New Vegas) and Ekram Rashid (technica director of The Elder Scrolls: Blades).
Shen spent nearly 15 years at Bethesda, during which time he wrote and designed Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. He was the lead designer of the Far Harbor DLC for Fallout 4, which, in our opinion, had "a great setting, a good story and more dialogue-based solutions than the base game provides;" later on Shen was promoted to lead quest designer for the epic sci-fi RPG Starfield.
Bethesda has lost one of its most recognizable faces. This afternoon Pete Hines announced on social media that he is leaving the company after 24 years of service. At the same time he thanked his team for their support and numerous ideas.
- Hines was Bethesda's senior vice president for marketing and communications, and was also in charge of the publishing division from late 2022. Under his watch, the team released the high-profile Starfield, and in the past also several installments of Fallout - it is enough to cite games such as Fallout 4 or Fallout 76.
- The long-time Bethesda employee, after retiring, wants to focus on "developing his passions" and "enjoy his life."
- While his announcement sounds like a farewell, it is not quite so. Hines indicated that he will always be a part of the community that has been created over the 24 years.
Its now former employee was officially thanked by Bethesda itself as well. Among other things, the company published a message on X about Hines' resignation and wished him well.
"We are grateful for his 24 years of management and wish him well. We will miss you, Pete!"
From now on, fans of Bethesda games as the "face" of the company will have to make do with Todd Howard, who doesn't enjoy great respect from the community. It will be recalled that only recently he has take flak for his statement about better hardware that owners of Starfielddissatisfied with the optimization need in order to fully enjoy the game.
