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One veteran Skyrim developer reckons online harassment is almost inevitable for Bethesda developers, no matter how good The Elder Scrolls 6 is.
Nate Purkeypile's been around the discourse block enough times to know how these things go. He previously worked as an artist (sometimes a lead artist) on everything from Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 to Skyrim and Starfield, but whether his games are beloved or not, Purkeypile's seen the internet's worst colors.
During a talk at GDC, the veteran developer recalls that "putting out Fallout 76 was a tough thing" since "the internet can be really awful." Fallout 76 was by no means a game that deserved tons of praise at launch, but some bad apples online took things too far and began to harass Bethesda workers directly.
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"Even if The Elder Scrolls 6 is great, I'm sure there's gonna be these hour-long YouTube videos [and] death threats yet again," Purkeypile says. "If you put out a game that people don't like, the internet is going to treat you like you're clubbing baby seals."
Former BioWare producer Mark Darrah also pushed back against the harassment that too many developers face in the internet age "because you don't know the circumstances that resulted in the thing that you're mad at." He also makes the very obvious but still necessary point that just because someone spent money on a game, it doesn't entitle them to dish out cruelty to strangers.
Either way, the inevitable backlash is something Purkeypile won't need to deal with too much. He's since left Bethesda and recently put out a sick-looking 'heavy metal horror game' set in a folkloric open world.
Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.
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