A new Xbox survey is asking players how they would feel about future titles being console-exclusive to Xbox, with Fallout, Hideo Kojima's Physint, and Minecraft name-dropped.

Since its massive spending spree on the likes of Activision Blizzard and Bethesda, Xbox has been a bit all over the place when it comes to exclusives. Aside from honoring exclusive deals with the likes of Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, Microsoft went all-in on being a third-party publisher for a bit there, bringing almost every one of its games to PS5. Then, with the appointment of new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, the strategy changed again: Gears of War: E-Day was confirmed to be on Xbox and PC only, despite reports that its PS5 port was apparently close to completion.

And now – barring Fable, which was previously confirmed for a PS5 launch – it looks like Microsoft may be priming players for more exclusivity. As highlighted by Windows Central, some Xbox Insider members have received surveys asking about game exclusivity and where they would play the title – or if they would play it at all if it's not on PS5 or Switch 2.

These reportedly included questions about Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and the upcoming Hideo Kojima game, Physint, which Xbox Game Studios recently became the publisher of, following Sony's decision to cancel the project. Kojima himself has said he doesn't know if Physint will release on PlayStation.

However, it's the final question that is likely to raise the most eyebrows. The question asks players to imagine every Xbox game – barring Call of Duty, which Microsoft is legally required to release on other platforms until at least 2033 – was an exclusive. However, it adds "For Minecraft only, existing titles would no longer be available for purchase on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles, and would not receive any new content updates."

I don't think people would be happy if Fallout 5 or Elder Scrolls 6 were exclusive to Xbox for sure, but the idea of removing Minecraft from PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, as well as no longer giving updates to those versions, is so brazenly a bad decision that even being floated is concerning.

Minecraft on Nintendo Switch has sold over 4 million physical copies in Japan alone, and the worldwide number is likely to be much higher, while the PS4 version of the game had over 17 million players as of 2019 – and given that a native PS5 version didn't release until 2024, again, that number is likely to have far surpassed it. Obviously, it's just a hypothetical for now, but I can only imagine that taking Minecraft away from millions would have a backlash that makes complaints about Sony's killing physical games look like nothing much.

As Minecraft sells over 425 million copies and attracts 300,000 new players a day, the evergreen sandbox game is getting its first dimension in 14 years

The radiant quest system that made Skyrim's open-world so responsive to its protagonist only came about because of Bethesda's "brute force" approach to the idea in Fallout 3.

In an interview with OPM first published in 2011, Todd Howard explained the origins of Bethesda's novel approach to an open-world RPG. "In Fallout 3 there are these random encounters," he explains. "A guy being hunted by a Deathclaw, [or] this group of people fighting over a refrigerator. And we wrote this giant script for Fallout 3 with about 40 or 50 random events."

Those events would be triggered in certain areas under certain conditions, but it was a relatively simple system, one which Howard describes as "a really big, brute force script." It might not have been elegant, but it was popular – "it turned out to be a really cool system in the game that made the game dynamic, and we just kept building this script."

After the launch of its seminal RPG, Bethesda wanted to keep using that system, but was looking for a more streamlined solution. "We came out of Fallout 3 going 'well, what if we have a system that did that instead of writing?'" The team "really liked" the way it worked for random encounters, so it expanded the new system into quests. "So that's what it became," Howard says. "Every quest uses this. And now it's become this all-watching thing over the game."

The system would go on to affect almost every part of Skyrim's many, many quests. Devs could shape the parameters behind an event – deciding what kind of NPC activated it, or in what area of the game they should be found – but 'radiant stories' formed the core of how Skyrim's world was built, and have gone on to have a massive impact on RPG design in the 15 years since.

Bethesda's last Skyrim concept artist has been laid off after "almost 18 years of dedication to The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield" amid Xbox cuts: "It has been my honor."

The Elder Scrolls Online is undergoing a bit of a "renaissance" this year and beyond, as the MMO's developers put it – and much of that involves introducing new types of content that break the game's old formula, so to speak.

2026 has not been easy for ZeniMax Online Studios with Microsoft's plan to cut over 3,200 employees at Xbox coming into action. Heck, Bethesda's union representatives reported a loss of "dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers" – and the chaos is ongoing.

Despite it all, however, game director Nick Giacomini confirmed that the MMO is "here to stay" with extra help from Bethesda… and boy, is it.

I was able to sit down with the director and other leads, including associate design director Jason Barnes, to discuss what direction The Elder Scrolls Online is taking now, in fact – and as difficult as it's been for the developers, it's an exciting time for the community with regard to all of the new content coming nonetheless.

There's the season system, of course, and the ever-puzzling Nowhere Vault, Rumors, and High Seas of Tamriel event.

It all marks a break away from the game's usual mold – one that involves yearly expansions and hardcore content (think Veteran difficulty and the like) – in honor of experiences that far more flavors of player might enjoy.

As Barnes puts it, experiences that "let players figure it out" for themselves… no combat skill required. Plus, "people love secrets," he says. "They love uncovering things." And, there's plenty more to uncover now.

ZeniMax saw success with content like the Nowhere Vault during playtests, even, as Barnes tells me engagement "was extremely high because everyone was looking in every nook and cranny and trying to figure out "what does this mean" and "does it have a secret to it?"

The devs didn't want to only cater to "the more causal player," though – don't get it wrong. This new format is for everyone, casual or hardcore.

They wanted to create "something that everyone could invest in, like, everyone could hop in." And, although "the combat's not extremely hard," it's a different kind of tricky. "There's still enough that you're feeling engaged," as Barnes describes.

I get it, honestly. I do love a good trial and Veteran-level dungeon here and there myself, but the Nowhere Vault is downright cool. It, and the other new content, offers a new way to engage with the MMO.

It's only the beginning, too. Between the more puzzle-oriented features and bigger events like the High Seas of Tamriel, it's all just a "foundation," according to the dev. ZeniMax plans to "layer on to it as much as we want," and the creators "already have some ideas floating around."

He can't tell me what they are, but I'm admittedly already pondering what might be next for The Elder Scrolls Online. Between that and the mysterious return to Skyrim… I can't wait.

This shift, "renaissance" or whatever you'd like to call it, in content brings back immersive Morrowind-style gameplay (I mean, come on, Rumors) and a fresh take on engagement – and it may just be precisely what the MMO needs.

Searching for other new games to look forward to? Read through everything we know about The Elder Scrolls 6 before it finally arrives.

As the wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 presses on, Skyrim players are still finding ways to spice the 14-year-old RPG up with mods – like one that brings Elden Ring combat to the game.

Yes, you read that right… FromSoftware's notoriously brutal combat in Bethesda's, uh, far more forgiving formula. A fan reveals the mod over on X, noting that it's "fully playable," with a clip of the crossover creation in action.

"This isn't a passthrough or any fancy tricks," they write. "Someone straight up remade Elden Ring's player controller in Rust and can now be added to any game!" So, put simply, this is the product of players themselves.

There's the first, "Funny-Bones" over on GitHub, who conjured up the "Elden Ring player movement and combat," as he calls it, using Rust – a programming language, which can then be applied to virtually any other game.

Then, there's the modder who did just that, leading to the impressive video of the Dovahkiin fighting Tarnished-style that's circulating social media now.

It's impressive, and doubly so considering the whole generative AI trend.

You know, the one that's seeing countless people try and generate games into other games? If you're lucky enough to have not witnessed it yet yourself, it basically involves folks taking popular titles and merging them with others.

For example, just have a look at this post that supposedly shows "the entire" Minecraft game running in Elden Ring. Spoiler alert: it's AI slop, and not a playable mod at all, unfortunately.

The Skyrim mod should be, though, as its poster notes he'll be uploading it "soon" – and fans are, well, fans. One person puts it perfectly in the replies: "Holy peak." Others dub the project "insane," while more comment on how "cool" it is.

As for when we'll all get to check it out for ourselves, there's no telling. Fingers crossed it's soon, because who doesn't love dying to a mere bandit a million times over?

Searching for other ways to spice your base game up? Browse through our handy roundup of the best Skyrim mods out there to download for free.

A viral, fan-made Fallout game that used Claude AI to take the post-apocalyptic RPG series to New York is no more, following an apparent cease-and-desist notice from Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax.

Earlier this week, an AI enthusiast took to the global town square to unveil Fallout: New York. Using Claude Opus 5.5, the browser game featured 117 unique locations, 112 characters, 46 weapons, and 0 audio files, but, well, every sound was made using code, so that was fine.

At the time of writing, the video attached to the tweet has been viewed 3.5 million times, though the reaction isn't entirely universal. To some, a pungent pile of AI slop. To others, the brimming sign of a bold and bright future. Regardless, at least one of those 3.5 million works for ZeniMax's legal department, so the project is no more.

Sharing the apparent cease-and-desist notice to Twitter, the creator behind the AI game has some choice words for Bethesda and the gang.

"Hey, [Bethesda], how about you make a Fallout game instead so I don't have to?" they tweet. "Sorry to everyone who enjoyed the game! But the suits got involved and the fun is over."

While few onlookers are surprised, the self-described "AI creative" had initially hoped Bethesda would leave them alone. In reply to someone who said Bethesda would come knocking on the original post, the Fallout fan had the following to say:

"It's all free and I make 0 money on it. I hope they don't ask me to take it down. I really love Fallout and this was just a fun tech demo. But I should add a quest where you have to serve someone papers, but they keep running away."

Yeah, about that.

RPG legend behind Fallout: New Vegas does "everything" he can to stop save scumming, but he wishes he'd "been more cynical about player behavior" in Pillars of Eternity.

The Elder Scrolls Online is changing as ZeniMax Online Studios moves the MMO further away from its old annual DLC formula toward new content drops that incorporate a greater variety of playstyles – a "renaissance" of sorts, if you will.

It's no secret that The Elder Scrolls Online has suffered a difficult year following Microsoft's plan to cut over 3,200 employees at Xbox, with Bethesda's union representatives reporting a loss of "dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

Its remaining developers are pushing on with work on the MMO, however, with game director Nick Giacomini having said that it's "here to stay" with extra help from Bethesda along the way.

As work carries on, the game is making a move away from its usual yearly expansion release, bringing a new season system to The Elder Scrolls Online with less combat-focused content.

I got to sit down with Giacomini and discuss this path forward myself, which he describes as a "renaissance" for the MMO "where we took a look at this game that's been going for 12 years and decided to make some changes."

It hasn't come "just for the sake of making changes, but because it was something the players were asking of us," as Giacomini says. Folks wanted the devs "to excite them" and "surprise them again" – something that was lost in the old "formula," so to speak.

That's why "breaking that formula was really important for us to excite our players." How, though? Seasons, sure, but also new types of content like the Nowhere Vault, Rumors, and High Seas of Tamriel.

"Games haven't stood still," after all. "New games have come out. Great games have come out. That's raised the bar of expectations for players." That led to ZeniMax having to "evolve and revise our own design ethos," and it's a welcome change, in my opinion.

Some more chaotic Morrowind-esque exploration, brain-scratching puzzles, and community events slot nicely into Tamriel, helping gap the bridge between expansions.

Because, you know – even though the studio is trying a new path, it's not entirely abandoning everything we've grown to love the MMO for.

Associate design director Jason Barnes tells me as much, alluding to the mysterious return to Skyrim that ZeniMax is cooking. "There's still a time and a place for some of the like kind of the bigger, more grand type of releases," as he says – "like the new Skyrim zone that we're working on."

That, Barnes describes, won't be "a return to form" entirely as "it's definitely not the same as our traditional zones" – but "it's going to be that kind of spectacle that the chapter model essentially gave us."
Honestly, I'm personally thrilled they're retaining a bit of ye olde Elder Scrolls Online goodness, while also making room for something fresh… and it's already upon us. Heck, we just got Update 51 and the High Seas of Tamriel.

I'm ready for more, and I'm equally as ready for more Skyrim – whatever form it might take.

Massive bit of Elder Scrolls lore from Morrowind is actually because of "a typo," former Skyrim designer believes: "Someone just typed a date wrong in the timeline"

Right now, it's anyone's guess when Fallout 5 might arrive. However, we do know it's happening, somewhere in the bowels of Bethesda, and one former developer from the studio believes taking the franchise out of the US would be a welcome shot in the arm.

Chatting to GoHumanize, via Insider Gaming, Bruce Nesmith, a quest designer on Fallouts 3 and 4, lead designer on Skyrim and design director on Oblivion Remaster, believes there's enormous potential in taking the property fully international. "It can go to any city that has a really distinctive style to it. You look at the places they’ve already taken Fallout and it’s Las Vegas, Washington DC, Boston and they’re all places full of style," he says.

"It would be very tempting to go outside of the country too even though Fallout is highly rooted in Americana," he adds.

London and Paris, the capitals of England and France, respectively, are two examples that "could be amazing," he mentions. And those would definitely be easy candidates here, offering large, sprawling metropolises for the devs to turn into post-apocalyptic wastelands. But they're too easy, in my view.

Head up to the Scottish Highlands, or over to Ireland. Or maybe some part of Australia. Each would be fascinating to see in this context. His point about Fallout being firmly planted in American culture can still echo through these locales in fascinating ways.

Imagine the culture clash of a post-nuclear Glasgow, where the city's now-mayor is an Elvis obsessive. Or the locals believe themselves to be in some distant state because American culture is all they had access to for generations. In some ways that wouldn't be too far removed from modern day whenever Country 2 Country happens in the dear green place.

The possibilities are endless. Todd Howard's been clear the series is unlikely to go outside North America, but never say never. Although, really, I think we all just want the thing to happen at all, regardless of what the setting is.

Fallout's iconic Vault Boy exists because the devs were struggling to solve an old-school RPG problem

There are multiple possible endings in The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, and rather than focus on a fixed conclusion for Morrowind, Bethesda decided to simply make all of them canon due to magic and whatnot. While this may seem like a savvy way to dodge committing to a single timeline, it actually stems from a typo, says an ex-writer on the series.

During an appearance on the FRVR podcast, Kurt Kuhlmann, a writer and designer at Bethesda from 2003 to 2023, explains that Dragon Breaks - incidents of time getting all weird and distorted - stems from a small mistake they decided to keep, at least in his mind. "It came from the fact that there was this timeline that someone had made⁠ - this was from Daggerfall days⁠ - and there was this big gap in time," he says.

"I'm 100% convinced that, in reality, in our world, that was a typo," he recalls. "Someone just typed a date wrong in the timeline, skipped like 3,000 years or whatever by accident. It's right between the end of one year and another. So the last date in this year, and then the first date [in the next], there's this gap."

Michael Kirkbride, a concept artist, writer and designer on The Elder Scrolls series, loved the possibilities this opened up, and pitched embracing it within the lore. "He wrote up the thing about the Dragon Break, and I think he was using that also because there was the issue of Daggerfall," Kuhlmann says.

"Normally, you don't worry about that in a game," he explains. "If you want to have a sequel refer to the past⁠, you're just going to have to pick one of those [endings] and move on, and just say in the sequel of the game, 'What actually happened was this.' The player could have done all these different things, but we can't have that."

Nobody's found a completely graceful way around this. The Knights of the Old Republic games simply choose one of your possible options from the first installment; the Mass Effect trilogy eventually fell on the laser sword of the third having one finish; and Fable uses the Zelda trick of jumping forward each entry to distance itself from your choices in the predecessor. Those are three examples of many.

You accept it as an RPG fan. Dragon Breaks, named for Akatosh, the Dragon God of Time (who else?), let Bethesda do whatever and keep it all in a timey-wimey mess. "Mike was like, 'No, what we're gonna do: What if all of them happened, and you got Numidium, and it was all crazy metaphysical stuff. So why not?'" Kuhlmann adds. "Everyone sees all the different endings, and no one knows what really happened, and it's this crazy metaphysical thing."

It certainly hasn't hindered the Elder Scrolls any, since the series is now one of the biggest in the industry. Perhaps this is a lesson for writers more broadly: When faced with a fork in the road, why not both? Time isn't real anyway. Who cares? Hell yeah.

The Elder Scrolls hasn't had a Fallout: New Vegas-style spin-off because of a "very protective" Todd Howard, Skyrim lead suggests

Veteran Elder Scrolls loremaster Kurt Kuhlmann suggests that Bethesda's fantasy RPG series never saw a Fallout: New Vegas-like spin-off because a "very protective" Todd Howard didn't want to create another situation where people might question whether his studio is best placed to handle the series.

In a new interview with FRVR, Kuhlmann – who also served as Skyrim's co-lead designer, a quest designer on Oblivion, and more before leaving Bethesda in 2023 – implies that New Vegas's success may have unintentionally created the perception of competition between Bethesda and Obsidian, namely when it comes to which studio makes the better Fallout games.

"The whole New Vegas thing did create this, at least the perception of this, 'who makes a better Fallout game?' 'Oh, they should just give it to Obsidian,'" Kuhlmann explains. "There are the Obsidian, New Vegas people that think obviously New Vegas is way better, Obsidian is way better at making those games, and why don't they just get Fallout altogether."

Furthermore, Kuhlmann adds: "I don't know that Todd wanted to create that situation again for The Elder Scrolls. Todd, from my time there, he is very protective of it."

Even though Fallout fans might pit Obsidian and Bethesda against each other depending on their favorite Fallout games, prior evidence suggests there's no actual beef between the two studios. In an interview late last year, Howard went as far to say Obsidian was "the only choice" to create a new Fallout game after 3, and before that, the Bethesda lead had expressed his "huge respect to the folks at Obsidian" for their list of 2025 releases.

Now, you'd certainly hope there's no vicious rivalry between the two, since not only are they working on a new Fallout game together, but Bethesda has actually taken over management of Obsidian following more reshuffling and restructuring at Xbox. Bethesda president Jill Braff has reportedly stated that the New Vegas studio will keep its "creative identity," though concerns were still raised by Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director Michael Douse, who said he "can't imagine" that the move "feels great" for the devs.

Xbox is in the midst of a "reverse acquisition," analyst says, with Activision "best equipped to run the studios Microsoft built itself."

By most metrics, Starfield should be considered a success. At least 15 million players since release. A Metacritic score in the 80s. Enough hype to draw one million concurrent players at launch. Yet it's fair to say that most Bethesda fans consider the space RPG a disappointment – a dramatic comedown from the heights of Skyrim and Fallout 4. In any case, you probably shouldn't count on there being a direct follow-up.

"I would be very surprised [if there was a sequel]," Kurt Kuhlmann, who served as lead systems designer on the game, tells FRVR. "I don't think Starfield was anywhere near successful enough to do a Starfield 2."

Kuhlmann ultimately left Bethesda around Starfield's launch for reasons that went beyond the space game, but he still believes a sequel could better deliver on its promise. "It's, in a way, too bad," he explains, "because I think with the lessons learned on Starfield, a Starfield 2 could have been much closer to the game that Todd [Howard] had [in mind]. You can envision that game, you can imagine that game. That's not quite what Starfield really is."

We know that Todd Howard had been dreaming of a game like Starfield for decades, and it's tough to imagine that the game we got was quite what he had imagined. Sure, it's got moments of brilliance, but those moments are held back in a game which, as Kuhlmann puts it, isn't "fully coherent."

Take the outpost system as an example. "For what it is, as a standalone system, it’s cool, but it’s not nearly as integrated with the rest of the game," Kuhlmann explains. It ultimately feels less fully baked than the settlement system in Fallout 4, which caused its own development issues – problems that weren't solved in Starfield, either.

"It caused problems for it to be integrated with the story and the missions and stuff in Fallout 4, so it was kind of put to the side," Kuhlmann says. "Which begs the question of, well, why is it still in the game? That’s a decision above me, it wasn’t my decision. You might say, well, we shouldn't have it then if we’re not going to integrate it with the story, then it’s just this system sitting over there with a massive amount of work involved."

In previous comments, Kuhlmann suggested that Bethesda "shouldn't have made" Starfield, because "we couldn’t really make it." It was simply too ambitious for even a studio as mighty as Bethesda to handle. Here's hoping that The Elder Scrolls 6 takes these lessons to heart.

"Most people wanted" to make The Elder Scrolls 6 after Fallout 4, says Skyrim co-lead, but then Todd Howard said "No, we're doing Starfield."

It's a big day for anyone who was avoiding Quake Champions due to its live-service elements. Four years after the FPS first left early access, it's become a completely paid-for game on Steam with no microtransactions and all the characters unlocked for everyone.

The announcement calls this "a new chapter" for the shooter. "Along with 30 seasons worth of content to enjoy, all Champions are now unlocked for everyone, and most vanity content is available to equip," reads the message from id Software and Bethesda. "Battle Passes and microtransactions have been removed. Quake Champions is now available for one low price on Steam."

The latest installment in the Quake series was already available on Valve's store, and had been for a number of years. It actually started out in early access before transitioning to 1.0 in 2022, and at one point it held a price-tag before going free-to-play with the standard business model of battle passes and such.

Having such a low barrier of entry didn't do much to draw in the masses, though. The all-time concurrent player peak on SteamCharts is 17,332, in June 2018. Since then, the game's brought in a community in the hundreds to low thousands.

Not exactly booming, in other words, and it's a shame because Quake is so pivotal to the first-person shooter space. The early releases helped shape and define online multiplayer, and you'll find several older installments still have dedicated communities.

It's noted there will be no more content updates to Quake Champions going forward. I expected that much regardless, given the layoffs and structural changes across Microsoft's games division, including Bethesda and id Software.

In addition to the full roster, most customization items are available for everyone as well. Honestly, for the price – a mere ten bucks – you could do a lot worse than give this a go.

Wardogs boss says "games need to cost more" and GTA 6 should've been the game to make the change.

Storied RPG studio Obsidian is now a part of Bethesda. That news came alongside Xbox's latest round of layoffs and reshuffling, and it's not entirely clear what it means for the studio's future. Apparently, it'll be little more than "a change in reporting structure" – according to a leaked memo from Bethesda president Jill Braff, anyway.

"The creative identity and strengths that make Obsidian distinct will remain at the core of their studio and work," Braff says in an email to employees, obtained by Aftermath. "[CEO] Feargus [Urquhart] and the Obsidian leadership team will continue to lead Obsidian, with the studio reporting to me. Bethesda Game Studios will continue to lead the Fallout franchise."

Earlier this year, Bethesda and Obsidian announced that they were collaborating on a new Fallout game, 16 years after the two studios worked together on the beloved Fallout: New Vegas. That project became official shortly after behind-the-scenes reporting suggested that Microsoft had swooped in to kill Obsidian's Avowed sequel and put the devs to work on Fallout.

"Together, the teams will build on their longstanding relationship and the early work already underway on a new Fallout project, with more to share in the months ahead," Braff says in the leaked message. "This structure supports the franchise-led model we've been strengthening while keeping accountability for both the studio and the franchise clear."

For much of the past decade, Obsidian has put its resources into developing original IP, including The Outer Worlds, Grounded, and Pentiment, as well as a fresh take on its Pillars of Eternity series in Avowed.

While I love New Vegas as much as anyone, and a new Fallout game is long overdue, I have a hard time restraining my cynicism over Obsidian's future. The studio was clearly passionate about its own, internal IP, and this talk of "franchise-led" development feels all too familiar. We have, after all, spent years watching studios like Ubisoft and Activision slowly turn their vast rosters of internal studios into little more than support houses for big franchises like Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty.

Baldur's Gate 3 publishing lead Michael "Cromwelp" Douse shares those concerns about Obsidian. "I can't imagine what it must feel like to have independent agency and then, suddenly enough, find yourself working *under* a competitor," he writes. "I can't imagine that feels great." Especially with reports of 25% of the studio being laid off as part of the transition.

Another Fallout RPG was in development at Obsidian Entertainment before Bethesda pulled the plug "a while ago," ex-studio lead says.

Just yesterday, we learned that Bethesda is taking control of Obsidian Entertainment amid all of the Xbox reshuffles – but not everyone is sure it's a good move.

Baldur's Gate 3 and Larian Studios publishing director Michael "Cromwelp" Douse is one such person, stepping forward to share his concerns of the management handover on Twitter.

"I can't imagine what it must feel like to have independent agency and then, suddenly enough, find yourself working *under* a competitor," he writes. "I can't imagine that feels great." I suppose his take makes sense, but commenters don't necessarily agree.

One person points out that the two studios aren't necessarily "competitors" anymore, so to speak, as they've both been under the wing of Xbox for some time now, prompting Douse to respond.

"Putting aside the fact I was referring to a time prior to the sale, the fact that you think two entities under the umbrella of one parent company can't be competitors tells me you've never had a corporate job," he replies – and that does check out, as they certainly can be.

But, again, it's important to note that both Bethesda and Obsidian have been working together for a while now. Two months ago, they unveiled their mysterious, collaborative new Fallout game – although we're not quite sure what it is just yet.

At that point, Bethesda said Fallout 5 is in pre-production and unveiled both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters, so it could be any of these… or perhaps something else altogether.

Only time will tell, I suppose, but, again, Douse's worries here aren't out of place at all. The industry is suffering quite a difficult time. After all, Microsoft's plans to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox hit both Bethesda and Obsidian previously, with the latter reportedly seeing around 25% of its studio impacted.

Following 1,600 redundancies from earlier this year, another 268 layoffs of that total 3,200 were announced yesterday. You know, the same time that news of Bethesda's new management over Obsidian dropped – so, yeah… it's not really a strange time to have a bit of anxiety about it all.

Searching for some new games to keep on your radar? Browse through our roundup of all the upcoming Bethesda games to look forward to.

Bethesda Game Studios is now managing Obsidian Entertainment – news that comes just two months after the studios unveiled their mysterious, collaborative new Fallout game.

Xbox Game Studios has managed Obsidian for over seven years now, following the acquisition of the legendary RPG developer in November 2018. The team delivered Grounded and its early access sequel, Pentiment, Avowed, and The Outer Worlds 2 during this time.

While the change in leadership is certainly big news, it does make a degree of sense. Bethesda is of course the the studio behind Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, franchises that Obsidian and its leadership are strongly aligned with. This news is especially intriguing right now, seeing as we know there are various projects in the works currently that are relevant to both teams.

There's the new Fallout game that Bethesda confirmed it was working on alongside Obsidian back in July – but it's not clear which Fallout game this is. In the same breath, Bethesda also had said Fallout 5 is in pre-production and unveiled both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters as well.

So, could it be Fallout 5 the two are collaborating on? I'd wager it's more likely to be the Fallout: New Vegas revamp, seeing as Obsidian headed the original back in 2010, or potentially something else entirely.

It's exciting news nonetheless, especially when the industry is otherwise suffering quite a difficult time. After all, Microsoft's plans to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox hit both Bethesda and Obsidian, with the latter reportedly seeing around 25% of its studio impacted.

Following 1,600 layoffs taking place earlier this year, another 268 layoffs (of that total 3,200) were announced today, as was news that Rare, World's Edge, and the Halo franchise will be moving under operational control of Activision Blizzard.

I'll be keeping my own fingers crossed for what's to come from the dynamic duo now that they're working more closely together than before, that's for certain. Who knows – perhaps we'll see something entirely new come from the two rather than just a remaster. Only time will tell for sure.

Searching for more new games to keep on your radar? Browse through our roundup of all the upcoming Bethesda games to look forward to.

It seems to me that no one is ever convinced that Game Pass deserves an oxygen tank while it's dying, not even Xbox executives. Having experienced what it's like to actually have your game on the sickly subscription service, Doom veteran Andrew Willis – who was impacted by the enormous job cuts at id Software in July – suggests a simple reason for all the confusion.

The former producer candidly tells Kiwi Talkz in a new interview that Game Pass is "poorly managed. Extremely poorly managed." He adds, "I think it was executed with so little foresight and so little attention to detail or understanding of the consumer market."

"So little sight there," Willis continues to say about Microsoft. "I think they just got caught in the trap of, 'Well, let's just make everything Netflix.'"

Microsoft could never decide how to measure Game Pass' success, Willis thinks. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma herself said in May that lowering the service's price to $23 was simply "a good first step" in improving it, and that Xbox staff would otherwise "have to outwork the problem in front of us in our path to restore durable growth." We know now that Microsoft's plan to "outwork the problem" includes a total of 3,200 layoffs at Xbox and, I guess, opportunistically deciding to publish another Hideo Kojima game.

Still, Sharma said as recently as July that "our business today is not healthy," partly because, "To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content."

"While those businesses have created meaningful value," Sharma added at the time, "they did not grow at the pace we expected."

Willis could have predicted this. He says, "When you start making decisions about commercial art that are investor-driven rather than consumer, or even developer driven, you're eventually going to make some pretty big mistakes. And I don't think Microsoft was ever able to figure out exactly how to measure the success of Game Pass."

"Was it hours played?" Willis wonders. "Was it games installed, was it user retention? I and many of my colleagues certainly never heard anything, like, metrics that we needed to hit. Is this a game you just want people playing in perpetuity? Do you want it to be super long? Do you just want people to see it and, like, want to install it right away, and you don't care if they play?"

This is why Doom: The Dark Ages had no business being on the platform. Willis says, "Doom should not have been on there. That was a stupid idea." While he was never explicitly told that its underwhelming commercial success contributed to id Software getting bludgeoned during Xbox layoffs, Willis wonders anyway if the game would have sold better had it not been available to Game Pass subscribers to play for free.

After The Dark Ages' 2025 launch, IP holder Bethesda was glad to tell fans, "Thank you for making DOOM: The Dark Ages the biggest launch in id's history - 7x faster to 3 million players than DOOM Eternal." But The Game Business reported at the time that a huge chunk of those 3 million players were on Xbox – over two million of them, actually – compared to just half a million fans on PS5.

"I know that sales didn't do as well as they were expected to," Willis says, "but I would suspect that's probably a huge part of Game Pass. And I guess whatever tradeoff from buying the game outright, to being on Game Pass, and whatever that metric was – installs, playtime, whatever – I guess maybe that wasn't good enough."

"I can only speculate why id was treated the way it was," the veteran producer adds. "I don't really have a good idea as to why id got chopped in half."

Unpopular and underperforming, Xbox doesn't have any answers, either.

Id Software dev says Microsoft's layoffs prove "they fundamentally don't understand" art, games, the entire business, or the destruction they just caused.

Kurt Kuhlmann became a central figure for The Elder Scrolls in the two decades and change he spent as lore expert and world builder at the studio, and, from where he's standing now, Bethesda owner Xbox's decision to cut veteran devs from the team working on The Elder Scrolls 6 doesn't make a lick of sense.

Kuhlmann discusses his experience at Bethesda with FRVR, noting that layoffs didn't happen until after Microsoft acquired the company and Zenimax. He echoes criticism from the Bethesda union, arguing that the layoffs didn't hit the "14 layers of management" decried in Microsoft's plan to streamline Xbox. Rather, dozens of experienced, hands-on developers were cut.

"They weren’t laying off the people managing things," he says. "They were laying off people that were creating the game." He describes the impacted devs as "very senior and longtime, like, the best people you can imagine."

Devs impacted by layoffs at Bethesda include 27-year veteran Christiane Meister, a core artist for Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4; Ray Lederer, the last Skyrim concept artist still at the studio, and a Bethesda artist of 18 years; and Ben Carnow, whose weapon and creature designs are a fundamental part of Fallout and Elder Scrolls lore.

"I can't say I understand it, even from a pure just business money point of view," Kulhmann says of the layoffs. "If you want the money from [The Elder Scrolls 6], why would you fire people who are working on that and are going to make it happen, and make it better, and get it done faster? Why would you do that?"

The layoffs followed a report that new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is pushing Bethesda to speed up production for new Fallout and The Elder Scrolls games, stoking fears that the "do more with less" management mentality afflicting many companies had finally come for the studio.

"These aren't people that screwed up, were slacking off, or bad at their jobs," Kuhlmann adds, having worked with many of the people affected. "That means anyone could be laid off. That means you have no way to know. You can’t just be good and work harder and know you’re safe."

In August, Sharma, amid an executive visit that saw union members protest outside the studio campus, said she'd seen a "live playthrough" of The Elder Scrolls 6.

"We shouldn't have made it," says former Starfield lead, because something more than "Skyrim in space" was too much even for Bethesda.

It's no secret that the video game industry isn't exactly being kind, even to the best of folks – including Kurt Kuhlmann, Bethesda Game Studios veteran and legendary Elder Scrolls "lore master" who worked on gems like the original Oblivion and Skyrim.

Although Kuhlmann hasn't been at Bethesda for quite some time now, having reportedly left over Bethesda's "bureaucratic" baggage, in his own words, and broken promises from Todd Howard about leading The Elder Scrolls 6.

He landed on his feet after leaving the company, however, moving on to work as a principal world designer at AAA studio Lightspeed LA… only to lose his role following a wave of layoffs earlier this summer.

Kuhlmann discusses his situation in a post on LinkedIn, putting into perspective just how difficult the industry is for developers right now – old and new.

"Along with most of the Last Sentinel team," he writes, alluding to his job at Lightspeed LA, "I was laid off in July, so I am back on the job market." He then flags potential employers: "If you know of anyone looking for a senior/principal/lead designer, please let me know or pass them my information."

It hits hard, honestly, seeing an industry veteran of his measure with literal decades of dev and leadership experience seeking work – but it's sadly not surprising.

Heck, just take a look at what's been happening all over, from the relentless layoffs at Xbox (which are ongoing, with Microsoft's plan to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox having commenced in July) to those elsewhere, even at indie companies, things aren't easy… anywhere, it seems.

And, as Kuhlmann proves, nobody is immune. He's got loads of know-how in the industry, and then some, as he lays out in his thread: "I spent the majority of my career at Bethesda Game Studios (BGS), and I've done pretty much every design-related thing for BGS games – narrative design and writing, world-building, combat balance, character systems, minigames, crafting, gameplay scripting, etc."

All of this and his time at Lightspeed LA. Kuhlmann concludes that he's "prioritizing jobs that allow remote work but I'm open to any opportunities that are a good match for my skills and experience" – and I sure do hope some come his way soon.

Fallout co-creator tells new devs terrified of layoffs they're "wrong" to expect making games to be a "stable job": "Art itself is inherently unstable."

Although Starfield stands as one of Bethesda Game Studios' most ambitious RPG projects to date, it didn't exactly outshine the likes of The Elder Scrolls or Fallout – and that may just be because it was a bit too ambitious.

Speaking to FRVR, Starfield lead systems designer Kurt Kuhlmann admits as much, first explaining how everything being "new" – because, you know, the space RPG did see the "largest engine overhaul" from Bethesda since the original Oblivion – complicated things right off the bat.

Developers "needed this new system to work" before building on it, he says, "and the later that goes, the less time you have to work with it." The size of the team working on Starfield was simply not it either, considering the sheer scope.

"Even with the size of the team that we had for Starfield, it wasn't big enough to create the amount of content that the grand idea of the game really required," as Kuhlmann recalls. "Like, we needed way more [devs]."

Why was the scope so wide for Starfield, though? Well, Bethesda head Todd Howard wanted it to be one heck of a game.

"He wanted to make a big open-world space game which, to him, wasn't Skyrim in space and you just go on this one planet and then a bit on this other planet," says Kuhlmann.

And, while "it is what we built," the lead says it might've been a bad idea. "That is an ambitious as hell vision, and I don't think, especially in retrospect, we shouldn't have made it. We couldn’t really make it." Bethesda did do its best, however.

As Kuhlmann concludes, "We pulled it off to quite an impressive degree, but yeah, it was not our forte. It was not leaning to our strengths."

I suppose I can see that – as a usual fan of all things Bethesda myself, Starfield didn't exactly mesh well with my tastes. I would've much rather played The Elder Scrolls 6 (sigh), but I am glad to see studios try new things – even if they don't always work out as well as they could've.

"Most people wanted" to make The Elder Scrolls 6 after Fallout 4, says Skyrim co-lead, but then Todd Howard said "No, we're doing Starfield"

The decision to delay The Elder Scrolls 6 to make room for Starfield and, somewhat distantly, Fallout 76 came as a surprise to many at Bethesda, according to former Skyrim co-lead Kurt Kuhlmann.

Chatting with FRVR, Kuhlmann recalls the comfortable rhythm that Bethesda had established in its production: Fallout, then Elder Scrolls, then back to Fallout. Switching series and genres like this gave the team a welcome change of pace, Kulhmann says, so after the release of Fallout 4, "we all expected" The Elder Scrolls 6 would be next.

Instead, Fallout 76, which was not "supposed to involve our whole studio," became a much bigger project that extended the latest Fallout phase of the cycle. But more impactfully, Starfield happened.

"What we were supposed to be working on next – it wasn't ever that we were about to suddenly work on TES 6, even though that's what I think most people wanted," Kulhmanns says. "And then Todd [Howard] was like: 'No, we're doing Starfield. I got that approved. It's going to be a new IP. It's going to be this ambitious [game]. It's going to be the greatest space RPG ever made.'"

Kuhlmann reckons Fallout 4's success gave Howard the leeway to successfully pitch an offbeat game like Starfield to the higher ups at Bethesda and Zenimax (just don't ask how Fallout 76, another experiment, launched). "I would've much rather have been making TES 6 instead of 76 and Starfield, personally," he reiterates, "and I think that would probably be true for the majority of the studio."

But Starfield did indeed happen, and it took many years to come together. In 2023, Howard said "I thought we would find the answers faster" after it took seven years just for Starfield to reach a state that it could be called fun to play.

"It wasn't like Starfield was this big internal like, 'Hey, we all want to make this space game, Todd,'" Kuhlmann says. "It was very much, 'Guess what, team? We're making this space game.'"

Today, eight years since its announcement, The Elder Scrolls 6 still doesn't have a release date or window. New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is reportedly pushing Bethesda for faster releases, and said just last month that a "live playthrough" of The Elder Scrolls 6 showed "incredible" scale.

As part of its big Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6 information drop, Bethesda said Starfield has reached 17 million players. Those players can also look forward to Year 3 of post-launch support, with Bethesda eying more Starborn content, gameplay improvements, and additional story quests.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel could be the title of Bethesda's next RPG according to a solid fan theory that dates back to a Starfield teaser.

Bethesda is among the many game studios affected by the ongoing mass layoffs at Xbox, which are set to cut 3,200 jobs by the end of the 2027 fiscal year. At least 1,600 employees have already been let go, including Skyrim and Fallout veterans with decades-long careers like Christiane Meister and Ray Lederer. It apparently was a rude awakening for staff at the storied studio, who'd hoped their work on such legendary franchises would insulate them from Microsoft's cost-cutting.

"There was an impending sense of doom, and it was like, man, is it going to be us?" Anne Barrett, who worked at Bethesda Game Studios Austin, tells The Guardian. "We thought we were safe. I mean, Bethesda Games Studios is Skyrim, it’s Fallout. We have really highly anticipated stuff coming out. We thought that the work we were doing was going to keep us safe. And instead, we got brought into a meeting that was two minutes long, to end, in some cases, decades of career at the company. It was just devastating."

Employees seemingly didn't have any more insight into the layoffs than the public did. They worried over the same reports of mass job cuts that the rest of us were all reading. The Guardian reports that they all learned of the mass layoffs when Asha Sharma published her "resetting Xbox" memo for the world to read. An hour later, people were called into meetings where they learned who had been fired.

"I remember, I laughed the whole day because I was in complete disbelief," Barrett says. "I was like, there’s no way they’re doing this. That’s how I processed it. Some of my co-workers were just devastated. I mean, breaking down. They did not understand what was going on. We had people who were just in really dark places. I think it hit me probably the next day. I felt like, wow – I just spent seven years doing all this. In college, people called me Bethesda because it was my dream to work here. And that was just … gone."

There are numerous upcoming Bethesda games in various stages of production, including the likes of The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. Series fans have been waiting well over a decade for both of those RPGs, and they'll likely be among the biggest titles Xbox has ever released. Yet it's still been willing to cut the veteran talent who helped make the previous entries great.

"I don't know how you create games at the quality level we were without the institutional knowledge that's been lost," Barrett says. "We have proprietary tech. Our titles have a very well-known visual identity. And when you lose the people who built the tech, when you lose the people who were improving it, you can't just throw new people at that problem, right? You can’t replace an artist with someone brand new and say: 'Now replicate what they were doing 15, 20 years ago.' The company has said that they can do it. I disagree."

Barrett says that her "view of the industry has definitely been damaged." arguing that "there’s been a loss of sight over why AAA games were so valuable to players. It wasn't just that they were big and shiny. It was that [the studios] had the resources to invest in creativity. What I see now is the same formula over and over and over again. In any entertainment industry, if you do that enough times, people get tired of it. I would love for us as an industry to get back to actually being creative and investing in that creativity."

EA devs feel "the threat of layoffs at all times," especially after Saudi Arabia acquisition: "It's hard to see how teams or games that underperform wouldn't be dissolved."

The wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 is admittedly brutal, but it feels a tad bit lighter when you go back to Bethesda Game Studios' older series gems – like Morrowind.

It's a dated RPG, all things said, seeing as it first launched a whopping 24 years ago, back in 2002. The visuals are… difficult to stomach at times, gameplay can feel clunky, and the world feels empty if you're not sure what to look for.

Morrowind is my favorite – and many other fans' – Elder Scrolls, though, and that's what makes Tamriel Rebuilt, a mod that aims to overhaul Bethesda's old game from the ground up with new content, so special.

Tamriel Rebuilt might not seem easy to install for folks unfamiliar with modding, however – but digital game platform GOG has swooped in to make it much simpler. So simple, in fact, fans can snag it in one click over on GOG.com for free.

Don't have Morrowind yet, or own it elsewhere? No problem, as the Game of the Year edition is a solid 60% off right now on GOG, too, as the storefront reveals over on X.

Talk about good timing, eh?

The new price – $6.59 – will apply until September 10, apparently, so we've all got plenty of time to grab it.

As for Tamriel Rebuilt itself, it's a mod that is 25 years in the making. Yes, it entered development before Morrowind was even out in the wild, founded on Bethesda's old online forums.

Now, it's regularly seeing updates, with the latest having dropped just five days ago. You can explore all of its details on the project's official website.

Tamriel Rebuilt is shaping up to be quite long-lived, and downright massive. So massive, in fact, that the team behind it expects it to outlast The Elder Scrolls 6 – just as it previously did Oblivion, Skyrim, and now Oblivion Remastered, too.

When will it be complete? Well, it's a continuous work-in-progress backed by many volunteers… so, maybe never. I'm not one to complain about eating good, though, so I'll just conclude with how grateful I am.

Excited for some new games? Here's everything you need to know about The Elder Scrolls 6 after replaying Morrowind.

Earlier this week, Bethesda Game Studios fans feared the worst for their mods as the studio revealed that it would be launching a brand-new Fallout 4 update with "Creations improvements" – and, much to many fans' dismay, another for Skyrim later on down the line.

Well, the Fallout 4 patch has officially landed, and surprisingly well, quadrupling the number of mods players can have and more – and along the way, so has Bethesda's first tease of what's to come to Skyrim, its more fantastical RPG.

"On Thursday, August 20, we will deploy a patch to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition that will increase console mod storage limits and bring more Creations improvements," it reveals in a new post online.

It continues, delivering the news I'd argue we all wanted to hear: our load orders will not be broken by the update… ideally, anyway. "While this update should not affect load orders," as Bethesda writes, "we do encourage players to log into your save game if you haven't done so in a while as a precaution."

I, for one, will certainly be doing so – but I'm thrilled that the Skyrim patch isn't coming with the same sort of warning the Fallout 4 one did.

Unsurprisingly, though, folks are still worried. As one person comments, "Ah nah man. My perfect load order gone." Others are simply curious about the update, and how closely it'll resemble the Fallout 4 patch, which upped the mod limit by a lot.

A fan asks, "Will this allow custom file type and assets for creations on PlayStation as well? Akin to how the recent Fallout 4 update allowed?" Hopefully, anon. Hopefully.

Various replies show that players are far more positive about the Skyrim update than they were the Fallout 4 patch initially (likely because the latter has launched and Bethesda is saying this one shouldn't bust our load orders), with one reading, "THANK YOU! I was hoping this update was coming."

I do personally wonder how much those "mod storage limits" will be increased myself, honestly – but I suppose I'll find out for sure tomorrow.

Here's everything we know about The Elder Scrolls 6 if you're craving something new from Bethesda – we certainly are.

Fallout 4 fans have been bracing themselves for the worst this week after Bethesda Game Studios announced an update with "Creations improvements" and more to come later to Skyrim, too – but, as it turns out, the patch isn't all that bad.

As Bethesda outlines in a new post over on Twitter, the new Fallout 4 update – which did indeed roll out yesterday as planned – contains various bug and crash fixes, as well as changes to the Creation Kit.

Perhaps most notably, however, it increases "the BA2 archive limit from 256 to 1024 to better accommodate larger collections of mods." In other words, the patch essentially quadruples the amount of Fallout 4 mods we can have.

That's a pretty solid improvement, if I do say so myself – one that's perhaps even worth the script extender and load order breaking a bit post-update, as they always do. I'm not alone in thinking so, either, as a thread over on Reddit proves.
Fans are largely pleasantly surprised, to say the least. "Wait holy shit this is actually a goated update just for the BA2 limit," reads one comment. "Now I can't wait to start a new playthrough!"

Another user exclaims that the "BA2 limit was out of left field and massive," as folks explain it "literally quadruples the engines mod count," which, you know… is kind of a big deal.

Plus, the update also apparently allows mods on PlayStation consoles to employ the use of custom assets – something fans have been asking Bethesda to implement for years now, as replies on a separate thread point out. Good news all around, eh?

For those of us who prefer Bethesda's more, erm, fantastical games, Skyrim's update sounds as though it'll be similar, increasing mod limits for console users and such – a nice change of pace to the studio's usual disappointing (sometimes, downright upsetting) patches.

Here's everything we know about The Elder Scrolls 6 if you're craving something new from Bethesda – we certainly are.

It seems we might be waiting a while to hear anything substantial about The Elder Scrolls 6 from Bethesda. To help with the anticipation, a group of devs known as NerveLabs took it upon themselves to make a new installment in the series themselves, and it's already faring quite well on Steam.

The game is called The Lantern of the Laughless Saint, and it takes a hefty amount of influence from the third Elder Scrolls game, Morrowind. It's got the mid-2000s aesthetic, the slightly strange fantasy vibe, and the heavy emphasis on exploration, along with some tongue-in-cheek humor and Myst-like esoteric lore.

"No one chooses to come to this island," the narrator says in the opening of the main trailer. "You wake from the same dream." Ominous, foreboding, and distinctly inviting.

The game's Steam store page says it's "built around exploration and connection," with the idea being you just sort of roam around to find out what's going on, or where you have to go.

"You learn the land by walking it, following rumors, reading scraps of burned history, and meeting lost souls who wandered to the ends of the Earth, following the same feverish dream of a light buried beneath the Tower," the game's description continues.

Intriguing. In a brazen bit of marketing, another trailer literally says this game exists because the devs got bored waiting for the sequel to Skyrim. "Fuck you Todd Howard," the video says. NerveLabs even shared this on the Oblivion subreddit, because what has being coy ever gotten anyone?

The Lantern of the Laughless Saint has been in early access on Steam for two days now, and the player reaction is already 86% positive.

"This game has heart and soul not seen in many releases today. It feels like the Bethesda of old," reads one fawning review. "CAN YOU DO THAT TODD, HUH????" says another.

Many buyers warn of performance problems, which are to be expected from an indie studio that's just released something in beta. But if you want those strange Morrowind vibes, this might be worth your time.

"Please stop": Skyrim and Fallout 4 players fear the worst as Bethesda has another go at "Creations improvements."

Stop me if you've heard this before, but Bethesda Game Studios is releasing yet another new Creations-related update for Fallout 4 today – and sadly, it looks like Skyrim isn't safe either, as the developer plans to roll one out for its beloved fantastical RPG, too.

Bethesda is well-known for its mod-breaking updates, with the Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition itself launching to "Mostly Negative" reviews on Steam thanks to how it… well, broke things left, right, and center last year.

The studio has a patch up its sleeve for Fallout 4 today that'll probably see its age-old tradition of malfunctioning mods continue, too, "focusing on general Creations improvements" – in other words, paid mods.

"As a precaution," Bethesda warns in its online post on the patch, "prior to these updates we encourage players to log into your game save if you haven't done so in a while or manually save your load order." Oh boy… more fumbling about with my load order. "Once your load order is saved, you'll be able to re-download your entire Creations list at once when the update is live."

That's not all, either. There's Skyrim-shaped chaos inbound as well.

"Additionally," as Bethesda writes, "we are also working on a Skyrim update with details to come soon." While the developer doesn't specify what said update might be, I'm betting it'll be just as annoying – because of course it will.

Judging by the comments, it's safe to say I'm not the only person annoyed by the two RPGs' coming updates, as folks brace themselves for the worst.

"OH MY FUCK THEY ARE DOING IT AGAIN," exclaims one disgruntled fan. "BREAK ALL THE FUCKING MODS FOR CREATION SLOP. FUCK YOU!" Another questions, "A SKYRIM UPDATE? For the love of god, please stop updating and breaking our load orders."

Others beg Bethesda to "leave Fallout 4 alone," with the sentiment overall proving none of us are, erm, looking forward to these patches.

Here's hoping things end up going as smoothly as they possibly can – but honestly, I've gone ahead and just cleared out my mods for now in preparation for the annihilation of my load order and custom downloads… because those who don't learn from history and all that.

Here's everything we know about The Elder Scrolls 6 if you're craving something new from Bethesda – we certainly are.

Earlier this week, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma experienced a "live playthrough" of The Elder Scrolls 6, and offered some exuberant praise for it, alongside with an extra little teaser: eight asterisks. These eight asterisks, apparently, represent the game's subtitle, and they're lending credence to a longstanding theory that the title of the upcoming RPG will be The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel. It seems Bethesda may have even been planning this reveal since Starfield.

Both Asha's tweet and a follow-up message from Bethesda's own account were quite conspicuous in repeating "********," so it seems clear the devs expect us to be speculating on an eight-letter subtitle for The Elder Scrolls 6.

"Sentinel" instantly became a frontrunner among the guesses, since the name has history in Elder Scrolls lore. The kingdom of Sentinel – and the capital city of the same name – is a prominent location in Hammerfell, which has long been rumored as the RPG's location. That alone makes it a pretty compelling guess, to the point where even former Bethesda dev Michael Kirkbride had co-signed it, but there's more fuel for this fire.

When you create your character in Starfield, there's an employee number listed at the bottom of the screen: 190514-2009140512. You can split that number into two-digit components, as in 19, 05, 14, 20, 09, 14, 05, and 12. Count out each number to a corresponding letter in the alphabet and, well, you can probably guess where this is going. You'll get S, E, N, T, I, N, E, and L.

The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield were both announced at the same time, and certainly by the time Starfield was actually released in 2023, it's possible Bethesda had already decided on the next game's subtitle.

In any case, it's safe to say that the Elder Scrolls community has been taken by Sentinel fever at this point. The whole Elder Scrolls 6 subreddit has been overtaken by Sentinel fever, especially after the apparent Starfield teaser was pointed out. I'm on board with the sentiment the folks behind the UESP Wiki are tweeting: "I am starting to believe."

The Elder Scrolls 6 demo had a surprise guest at Bethesda HQ: a giant inflatable rat set up by protesting employees to watch Xbox execs who oversaw "devastating layoffs."

The Elder Scrolls 6 is once again back in the limelight following Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's "live playthrough" of the upcoming Bethesda Game Studios RPG, as fans (and developers, it seems) try to decipher what the game's setting might be.

It's a tale as old as time – The Elder Scrolls 6 theories running rampant online. This time, though, they may actually have a foundation to them, as Sharma's used exactly eight asterisks to note the game's title… and Bethesda did the same in response.

So, what could those eight asterisks stand for? Not Hammerfell, sadly, but that doesn't mean the massive region is off the table entirely. Sentinel just so happens to fit the eight-letter bill here.

Fans have noted as much on a post regarding the "teaser" from Xbox (if you can call it that), suggesting "Sentinel" as a potential title – a potential title that former Bethesda developer Michael Kirkbride himself evidently feels is plausible.

In response to the suggestion, he leaves a comment himself: "Yep." Understandably, the Elder Scrolls veteran's agreement here has us thinking that the Hammerfell kingdom might truly be it.

That's not the only possible setting or title, though, of course… there's still High Rock (if you remove the space between High and Rock, that is), and Starfall, as in Starfall Bay, as an Elder Scrolls stan points out on X.

The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages – the biggest (and best, if I do say so myself) wiki on Bethesda's series – has rounded up plenty of potential fill-ins for the eight asterisks in a thread, too, and there are many.

Orsinium immediately catches my eye, standing as the legendary capital and ancestral homeland of the Orsimer, as does Aldmeris… perhaps because I'm unapologetically a High Elf in every possible Elder Scrolls entry myself, and, you know, because I'd like to see Bethesda shake things up a bit with The Elder Scrolls 6.

What better way to do that than to explore some of the series' mythology in-depth?

Heck, I'd love to see the studio deviate from the timelines it's previously covered by a lot, although I doubt I will (my dream to see the Dwemer and Falmer take center stage will never come to life, I'm afraid).

I'll be happy with whatever Bethesda cooks up at this point, however. I mean, after well over a decade now, The Elder Scrolls 6 might just stand as one of the most hotly anticipated new games – so, yeah.

The Elder Scrolls 6 demo had a surprise guest at Bethesda HQ: a giant inflatable rat set up by protesting employees to watch Xbox execs who oversaw "devastating layoffs"

Oblivion Remastered has by and large been a huge success for Bethesda both critically and commercially, but even more than a year after launch, it still suffers from poor performance including stuttering, frame rate instability, and crashes. The Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game launched today with touchscreen, mouse control, and gyro aiming support, as well as general improvements like DLSS anti-aliasing and "performance optimizations from the original Oblivion Remastered release," according to Bethesda itself. There's been no official sign that these performance improvements are coming to other platforms. Not until now, at least.

"We've heard your feedback asking for an additional patch for Oblivion Remastered," reads a tweet from the official Bethesda Twitter account. "The Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game has a number of optimizations that we are looking into bringing to other platforms and we will share more when we are able."

I haven't had the chance to play Oblivion Remastered on Switch 2, but I played it a lot on PS5 last year and definitely felt like it could use a little polish despite the incredible visual overhaul and systems refinements. The trademark Bethesda jank is well-reserved and arguably necessary, but random frame rate drops and progress-killing crashes are a straight-up hinderance.

Of course, the improvements to the Switch 2 version are frustratingly unspecific, but "performance optimizations" would definitely be welcome on all versions of the game. Hopefully, Bethesda's acknowledgment ultimately manifests into something more than just A Tweet.

Oblivion intern tried to outsmart Bethesda's AI and was stunned when his apple murder strategy actually worked: "I can't believe you accounted for this"

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma suggests she's just played, or at least watched, a "live playthrough" of The Elder Scrolls 6.

"Live playthrough of The Elder Scrolls VI: ******** this morning," Sharma says offhandedly in a tweet. "The scale and grandeur are incredible. The story is even greater."

This "live playthrough" will presumably have been a milestone presentation shown to Sharma and possibly other Xbox executives by the development team at Bethesda, likely including chief Todd Howard, but we can't say for sure what the exact environment was like or how far along the demoed build is.

I've no doubt that Elder Scrolls scholars will pounce on the eight asterisks Sharma uses to censor the title of The Elder Scrolls 6, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it just yet.

That's your regularly scheduled The Elder Scrolls 6 teaser sorted. With the energy of someone who's checked the readings, found them wanting, and shattered the nearest glass labeled "break in case of emergency," Sharma's added another breadcrumb to the pile.

In June, Xbox CCO Matt Booty assured fans that, some eight years since its reveal, The Elder Scrolls 6 is "coming along well." He also joined Howard in the illusion that a game can be un-revealed, or at least revealed twice.

"I would say one of the more challenging balancing acts of someone in a job like mine is balancing that you want to go show the world all the cool stuff you're working on, and you want to get them excited early, but we also know that we want to wait till the right moment," Booty said.

"I can tell you, having visited Bethesda and sat with Todd and seen 'Elder Scrolls' playing, it looks amazing, and it's coming along well," he added. "And we'll make sure to announce it and really reveal it at the right time."

Last month, on the heels of layoffs that hit the studio as part of Xbox's widespread bloodletting, Bethesda announced a whole bunch of stuff about the future of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Amidst this torrent of announcements, The Elder Scrolls 6 was described as Bethesda's development priority, with multiple other games caught in its orbit.

The Elder Scrolls 6, like the pre-production Fallout 5, uses Creation Engine 3, which Bethesda says "extends beyond our teams to the technology, tools, and systems that will power the next generation of Bethesda RPGs."

"Unconscionable": The day of Bethesda's Fallout reveal explosion, its laid-off Montreal devs were told they "would receive the smallest severance legally possible" and "immediately" lose health insurance benefits, union says.

Last year's The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered did a lot more than slap a fresh coat of paint on the 2006 RPG, with environments (but not necessarily character models) that look straight out of a 2026 AAA release, but as anyone who's played the original game knows, it's still very much Oblivion, lovable jank and all. While there was a lot of deliberation about what and what not to modernize during development, Todd Howard and co. drew a hard line between remaster and full-blown remake, opting to market the game as a polished-up version of the original rather than something all new.

That's because, in the words of associate art director Dan Lee, it shares the same "bones" as the original Oblivion. "Obviously the art is remake territory, it was all remade," Lee tells Nintendo Life. "But it really came down to Todd's perception of - well, the core bones are still the original game. So it's disingenuous to call it a remake. We're taking the core engine and then laying all this other stuff on top. We did some other little tweaks and things like that. But the core is still mostly there."

You might think the distinction between remaster and remake is fairly straightforward, and to some degree it is, but since there's such a wide spectrum between straight-up ports and ground-up remakes, the lines can be a little fuzzy and lead to all sorts of controversy when it comes to pricing and availability alongside the originals. On the other hand, there are remakes that are so different from their original counterparts as to be virtually considered separate games, leaving zero ambiguity about how to label them.

"There are all kinds of games that fit on the scale where it's just high resolution and then maybe they upgrade some of the textures or update some character models," adds Lee. "But then you can go all the way over to Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which are clearly remakes. They're taking the original vision and then just making completely new games based on that vision. Whereas here, we have lots of elements of the original game intact."

I think Bethesda made the right call sticking to remastering Oblivion rather than remaking it. Both Oblivion and Oblivion Remastered are gorgeous games and, with a remake, the studio would've likely had to reallocate resources from The Elder Scrolls 6, which was announced eight long years ago. No distractions, is what I'm saying.

Oblivion intern tried to outsmart Bethesda's AI and was stunned when his apple murder strategy actually worked: "I can't believe you accounted for this"

One of the most delightful elements of a good open-world RPG is the way you can bend and sometimes break systems to your will, giving you the freedom to approach and think about obstacles independently from the intended design. The Elder Scrolls games have been masterclasses in emergent gameplay for decades, as evidenced by a fun new anecdote from Bethesda Game Studios veteran and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered art lead Dan Lee, who joined the studio shortly after OG Oblivion's announcement way back when.

Talking to Nintendo Life, Lee shares one of his early memories from working on Oblivion as a play tester. Testing persistent AI behavior, Lee chose to use an NPC's hunger mechanic against him instead of tackling the quest head-on as scripted in the linear path.

"I was playtesting and I was learning about how reading AI worked and I learned about the hunger mechanic, how the characters actually look for food if they're hungry. There's a quest that has you getting onto a boat and you have to kill a captain. And then as you do it, his second in command and another guy pop up and ambush you," says Lee.

"I was like, 'Can I abuse this in any way?,'" he adds, a question every self-respecting Fallout and Elder Scrolls player asks dozens of times during any given playthrough.

"So I heard about this eating mechanic, I snuck through the ship into his room, took all the food, left a poison apple in his pocket, and then left. I wait and I get the pop-up saying 'Quest Completed'; he's dead. I ran to [designer] Emil Pagliarulo and said, 'I can't believe you accounted for this. This is great!' And he's like, 'I didn't, that was just the game systems working.'"

These kinds of interactions are what make games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Baldur's Gate 3, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild feel alive and endlessly replayable.

Lee says that quest has stuck with him for more than two decades because of the way Oblivion's systems "interplay" and result in "unexpected fun," and beyond that, anything that makes an RPG feel less scripted and more organic builds immersion and makes it feel more lifelike.

Of course, the game's lovably egregious bugs arguably subtract from that immersion somewhat, but that's all part of the Bethesda RPG experience we've come to know and love.

Here are the best RPGs we recommend in 2026.

Not releasing a new Fallout game alongside the popular Amazon Prime TV show might seem like a missed opportunity, but Obsidian Entertainment co-founder and Fallout: New Vegas writer Chris Avellone reckons the decision was likely a "personal" one for the devs.

It's now been over a decade since Fallout 4, so to say fans have been patiently waiting for the next mainline entry would be an understatement. Thankfully, Bethesda has now revealed the tiniest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel with confirmation that Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," albeit with The Elder Scrolls 6 remaining the team's priority.

Beyond that, it's also been confirmed that remasters of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas are on the way, as well as a new game that's being developed by New Vegas studio Obsidian, which raises the question – why didn't Bethesda align any of these releases with the first or second season of its TV show? Asked about why we've not seen more Obsidian-led Fallout games or a new title to coincide with the show on a new episode of the Human Can Opener podcast on YouTube (below), Avellone gives his thoughts.

"I think whatever the decision was not to do that, it didn't feel like a business decision," he begins, saying that to him, it appeared to be a more "personal" one. "But I don't know for sure," he adds.

What "personal" factors might have come into play here are another matter that Avellone doesn't elaborate on, but to suggest it wasn't a business decision would certainly track. After all, the TV show saw the existing series surge in popularity as fans new and old were inspired to jump back in. Just imagine how popular a brand new game would have been if it launched around the same time? Well, it's not like the Fallout TV series is over yet, so who knows, perhaps one of those upcoming releases will align with one of the future seasons.

Fallout 3 was "not what we intended" after tech constraints in 2008, says Bethesda vet Nate Purkeypile, so it's time for a "better" remaster.

Former Bethesda artist and Fallout 76 lead Nate Purkeypile is just as glad as you are that Bethesda has a Fallout 3 remaster on the way. Purkeypile worked on the original RPG back in 2008, so he's acutely aware that it could have been better.

Purkeypile tells The Examined Game host Steven Lake in a new YouTube interview, "I'm personally looking forward to [the Fallout 3 remaster], because we were, like, super tech-constrained making Fallout 3." The dev says, "you could only place so many lights," plus textures were small, and devs were "constantly worrying about the memory budgets, or how much stuff you're putting on-screen... So it's not like it's exactly how we intended."

Recalling video game development in 2008, nearly 20 years ago, is like revisiting an archeological site. Culturally, no one could decide if video games were really art, but teams crunched hard trying to at least make something good. Fallout co-creator Tim Cain recalls in a 2023 YouTube video on the subject, "Many, many people worked many, many hours more than eight in the '80s and '90s, and even into the early 2000s. Part of it was passion, part of it was necessity. There was just no way to get games finished without crunch."

Then, in terms of technology, 2000s gaming was stone and bronze compared to the iron tools we have today. Unreal Engine only went up to 3. No one sat around evangelizing about 4k resolution, because there was none to be had. Developers had to be flexible with their limited options, but some didn't like to be, so Purkeypile says, "I get why people are more upset over movie remakes and stuff. But, in the case of games – and particularly the art side of it – it's 100% not what we intended, and it was very, very constrained."

"Even before I was doing games professionally," the developer remembers, "I started making games before we had color. So, I was seeing [development] change dramatically over time."

The past 20 years of technological evolution we benefit from now is helpful not only to new games, but also to remakes. Purkeypile emphasizes, "I think a lot of these remakes have been done, frankly, better lately, too."

He continues, "Like the Resident Evil ones and stuff, those were fantastic. Whereas, for a while, I think a lot of those updates were like, 'Oh, we made the textures a little bit bigger, and, like, threw a sharpen filter in Photoshop,' and it doesn't really look that much better, or actually as good as other games coming out."

Ideally, the Fallout 3 remaster ends up a perfect balance between the old and new world: more faithful to its original developers' ideas in 2008 while also being a genuinely competitive modern title.

Fallout 3 is a masterpiece and I hope the remaster comes to Switch 2.

There are, apparently, multiple Fallout games on the way, including one being made by Obsidian Entertainment. This is an appealing prospect, since that's the same studio that gave us Fallout: New Vegas, and rumor has it Josh Sawyer is back in the director's chair as well. One of the studio's co-founders believes this much is good for both the company and for publisher Bethesda.

Chris Avellone, a co-founder and former senior designer at Obsidian who worked on New Vegas, Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic 2 and more, told the Human Can Opener that he immediately got excited at the prospect of New Vegas's writer returning. "If they got John Gonzalez to be the lead writer again, that's going to be awesome," he says.

"I have yet to play a game that John wrote for that I didn't really enjoy the story," Avellone explains. "Overall, I love his writing. I want to know the answers to these questions that he's presenting to me in the narrative. Having him back at Obsidian is going to make that Fallout game shine."

Gonzalez did come back to Obsidian in January 2025 after a spell at Guerilla Games working on the Horizon series, where he's now creative director. "Back to Obsidian for exciting times! (No, it's not [Fallout: New Vegas 2])," he says on LinkedIn, putting a dampener on Avellone's hopes.

However, it's unclear if he's updated his page since Xbox's massive restructuring of its games studios, where there were hundreds of layoffs, and many teams had their slates changed. Obsidian is one such team, where Fallout became a more central priority according to reports. Gonzalez's focus may have shifted as a result.

Naturally, Avellone gives a hat tip to Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, developers who worked on the original Fallout and its sequel and are now at Obsidian, where he "can't imagine" they wouldn't be incorporated into a new Fallout game in some capacity. "I think it's going to be both good for Obsidian, because I don't know how well their original IP was gaining traction," he adds.

"And I think it's going to be good for Bethesda, in many ways," he says. "Bethesda has chronically long lead times for all its titles coming out, it's just how the studio's always worked." Obsidian could be a "satellite studio" to help share the publisher's workload and increase the cadence of releases.

Considering we're now 11 years removed from Fallout 4 without any concrete evidence of Fallout 5, he has a point. We'll see what the future has in store.

You can't buy Fallout 5 or Elder Scrolls 6 yet, but you can buy Bethesda's new $160 Nuka-Girl statue

Bethesda is now 40-years-old, which might inspire you to reminisce about all the incredible Fallout games the developer has released, and every astounding The Elder Scrolls game it's launched, and then you start wondering – hey, what about Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6? What's going with those guys, since Bethesda overlord Todd Howard keeps assuring everyone the projects are well underway, though he knows it's taking a while? Bethesda now replies shhh, just buy a $160 Nuka-Girl statue instead.

The 1.72-pound sculpture now available for pre-order on the official Bethesda Gear Store is the closest thing to an anniversary gift you're getting this year. It's an uncanny replica of the Fallout franchise's Nuka-Cola mascot, a woman wearing a saran-tight, white space suit, which Bethesda proves with a close photo of the statue's butt on its product page.

"Beautifully-detailed and standing 12.8 inches (32.51 cm) tall, this collectible is sure to command a lot of attention wherever you display it," Bethesda writes in the Nuka-Girl statues item description. That's certainly an efficient way to describe why someone would want to purchase an oversized PVC statue of a lady with her butt out.

For its 40th, Bethesda has also swapped its usually muted, black-text logo for a foreboding, glowing red one it says, in a Twitter post, was "inspired by our roots." Old fans are glad to see it borrows its font from '90s-era Bethesda, and the new-old logo is printed on the 40th anniversary t-shirts the company recently added to its merch shop.

As for the pin-up Nuka-Girl, she's loyal to one corporate overlord only – "Nuka-Cola" brands the rocketship she leans against. A 13-inch version of the statue from collectibles maker Gaming Heads is similarly festooned in soda pop branding, but its standard version costs $499. If you really must quench your thirst, the official Bethesda statue offers a more affordable girl. She's no Fallout 5, but – well, yeah, she's no Fallout 5.

Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction": Bethesda breaks silence on long-awaited RPG.

The Elder Scrolls Online developer Zenimax Online got hit hard by the unprecedented Xbox restructuring from earlier this month, with a Microsoft filing confirming the studio lost more than 200 developers. Still, it insists its flagship title isn't going anywhere any time soon.

In a new community letter from Elder Scrolls Online's new game director, Nick Giacomini, who replaced longtime lead Rich Lambert, Giacomini lays out an optimistic future for the game while acknowledging "a number of organizational changes and departures of teammates who helped shape The Elder Scrolls Online."

Despite messaging that indicates Zenimax Online is struggling with "team bandwidth," as well as concern from a laid off senior developer about the studio's ability to push out content at the same cadence as before, Giacomini says there's still a bright future ahead for Elder Scrolls Online, thanks in part to "a new chapter of collaboration across Bethesda.

"By working more closely with Bethesda Game Studios across The Elder Scrolls, we have new opportunities to share ideas, align our efforts, and create even better experiences for players, all while continuing to build the future of ESO."

Giacomini couches his optimism with some less than great news. "With the recent changes to our studio, trying to hit our previously announced deadlines would mean sacrificing the quality you deserve," he says. "Therefore, we are establishing a clear principle for how we build and ship content and features moving forward: quality experiences over calendar dates."

You know what means: delays. Specifically, the new Crimson Veldt trial is being delayed to January 2027 alongside Update 52, which will also include the new Jerall Pass PvP zone and Skyrim's Dynamic Encounters: Rimegales. The long-anticipated refresh to classes and combat is also being moved to 2027, but Zenimax Online is looking at "some interim options" for classes in the meantime.

"We know it's disappointing to see some features move out, and believe me, we want to get these into your hands as soon as possible, too. But we believe this is the right move for the long-term health of the game," says Giacomini.

Giacomini lays out the main highlights of this year's two seasons in his writeup, and there's definitely a good amount of new stuff still coming this year, but his focus returns to the long-term vision.

"We've had bumps in the road over our 12-year history that we've always faced together," he says. "As our studio evolves, we are not looking to just 'maintain' the game. We are looking to grow it. You, our community, are the reason we have grown over the years, and we want to keep growing with you. 

"Moving forward, our principles are simple: we will continue to build fun and rewarding experiences through our Seasonal model, deliver long-standing player-requested features and changes that make Tamriel more fulfilling, and find new ways to provide you with features and content to keep your adventures fresh."

Giacomini says plans for Elder Scrolls Online in 2027 are still being finalized, but he teases some "never before seen," "all-new experiences in Skyrim" as part of the roadmap. I've been playing Elder Scrolls Online on-and-off for almost a decade, and I'm cautiously excited to see what's next for a studio navigating dramatic leadership changes, a tighter budget, and a smaller team.

"There's really no one left": Former Elder Scrolls Online dev says the MMO "basically funded other failing projects" as Microsoft guts the studio

Bethesda has rumbled back to life. Nearly three years after Starfield and with The Elder Scrolls 6 nowhere in sight, the positive reception to the announcement of the Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters is hardly surprising. With the help of Obsidian, between 2008 and 2011 Bethesda cemented itself as the rightful king of the open-world RPG, Fallout 3 and Skyrim bookending the kind of development run we'll probably never see again.

A long-awaited return to the Capitol and Mojave Wastelands is welcome, but while these remasters aren't quite too little, too late, they serve as a reminder of just how neglected one of the biggest and best RPG series has become.

This November will mark 11 years since Fallout 4, with Fallout 76's eighth anniversary falling just a couple of weeks before. And until last week, there was nothing to suggest another game was anywhere close to the horizon – based on Bethesda's previous release cadence, 2033 was a solid guess for a potential Fallout 5 release year. That's not far short of two full decades since the series' last traditional, single-player RPG launch – an unforgivable drought for a series that has over the past few years, been transformed into a mainstream, global franchise thanks to the critically-acclaimed Amazon Prime series.

In the last week, admittedly, the Fallout slate has filled up significantly. First up will be next year's "prequel story to Fallout 3" heading to Fallout 76. The Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas remasters seem likely to follow relatively soon after, potentially positioned around Fallout season 3 and the Fallout Shelter show. Fallout 5 is officially in pre-production, but could easily follow as many as five years after Elder Scrolls 6, which still feels a long way off. Obsidian's new Fallout project seems likely to plug that inter-franchise gap – perhaps some time in 2029 or the early 2030s.

Kick in the head

It's that last project that's currently most mysterious, but also the clearest indication of what Fallout and Xbox actually need: help from the wider ecosystem. Xbox and Zenimax are full of studios that could have, over the six years since the acquisition, been running wild in the franchise playgrounds that are currently open only to Bethesda. Clearly, the kind of AAA, open-world RPG that Todd Howard wants to make takes many years to complete, but I see no reason why no other studio has been allowed to do more than sniff in the direction of the Fallout and TES brands.

The possibilities are huge; a stealthy, Dark Brotherhood immersive sim made by Arkane Austin instead of shuttering it after Redfall; a Ghoul-led game using the State of Decay tech from Undead Labs, which just got sold off; an Age of Empires conversion from World's Edge, which has been diligently plugging away on DLC and remasters for that franchise. Xbox's affinity for beefy guys with guns across the Gears, Doom, and Halo series could have led to an amazing power armor shooter. There are certainly studios whose work doesn't mesh with Bethesda's oeuvre so neatly, but within the Xbox ecosystem, they're surprisingly few and far between. And all that is to say nothing of Obsidian, a studio that not only made one of the best Fallout games, but eventually took its fate into its own hands and made Avowed and The Outer Worlds as its own answers to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

That none of those studios have been given a Bethesda license is a mistake, but it's a mistake compounded by the fact that Bethesda isn't equipped to handle them at the pace that should be required. Its two most important IPs have been left to languish for more than a decade. Starfield is a primary cause for that, but so is Bethesda's size. The studio has remained deliberately small by the standards of a major studio, and at about 450 staff isn't capable of being a two-game studio, especially since switching between three different franchises means it can't pull off the kind of juggling act that the similarly-sized Insomniac - which has launched a whole suite of Marvel games over the time since Fallout 76 – has been able to achieve.

A hit of Jet

It's likely that the Fallout release cadence will pick up now. The remasters are the start of that process, and the Obsidian game and Fallout 76 expansion will help. But while Xbox's recent deluge of lay-offs have hit hard, the fact still stands that the publisher is sitting pretty on some of the industry's highest profile RPG brands and what remains of the studios that created them. With only the likes of CD Projekt Red as major competition, the question is whether new Xbox chief Asha Sharma will be able to do what predecessor Phil Spencer couldn't, even as the company haemorrhages staff. If CDPR is able to push out three major RPGs in quick succession, could the much larger Xbox be in a position to follow suit instead of squandering the opportunity? Or, is such a massive entity prone to slow manoeuvring, like trying to turn a Brotherhood of Steel zeppelin?

But, whether or not that all comes to pass, it doesn't change the fact that as a gaming series Fallout has been left behind by its creators for far too long, and no number of remasters will help speed up the ongoing wait for its next major iteration, especially as the years tick on.

The Elder Scrolls Online is struggling with "team bandwidth" after Xbox layoffs hit Bethesda and ZeniMax, leading devs to limit a store for in-game items.

Tim Cain knows better than nearly anyone that the earliest computer RPGs – like Fallout, which he helped create – had a huge advantage over their feeble brethren on consoles, which were afflicted with hardware limitations for at least two decades. After that, we were living in a post-Morrowind society.

"In the '80s, console RPGs were incredibly primitive. I'm talking, stone knives and bear skins," Cain says on his YouTube channel in response to a fan question wondering about how consoles changed the RPG market over time. "I mean, tabletop RPGs were really the way to go if you wanted really in-depth rules, but even computer RPGs had more complex rules than console RPGs, because everything from the graphics, to the system mechanics, and sound effects all had to be really, really simplified and reduced to fit in that very limited memory storage that it had, and CPU bandwidth."

"To me, console RPGs were kind of like toys that you could kind of play," Cain continues. Their controllers demanded select screens rather than the point-and-drag you could accomplish on PC, and checkpoint saves were a necessity for preserving their limited storage. But "all of this changed in 2002," when Bethesda launched The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

"Morrowind came out on the Xbox. It was an open-world Western RPG that felt like it had none of the limitations of previous console games," says Cain. "It was a PC game playing on an Xbox."

"It stunned me when it came out, because I remember thinking, 'This…this is it,'" he adds. "Not so much because of what the game was, but what it represented, which was – from now on, there's going to be a lot more parity between these two things.

GamesRadar+'s Morrowind review apparently published in 2006 frothily declares "a new standard in role-playing games. [Morrowind is] astonishing in its depth and detail, and also sets a new benchmark in graphics."

Morrowind was an in-depth spectacle – and not easily replicated. Cain thinks that buggy launches became more common for console games by at least the mid-2000s, once the Xbox 360 and PS3 had established digital storefronts where people could directly buy and download their games, which "meant it was also easy to patch them."

"Maybe this was a coincidence, maybe it wasn't," Cain says generously, "but, suddenly, console games seemed to ship with bugs in a way they had never shipped with bugs before. They weren't as tight. Then, by the 2010s and 2020s, it felt like parity had been established and reached between PCs and consoles." With both of them covered in bugs, PC and console had reached equality at last.

"Unconscionable": The day of Bethesda's Fallout reveal explosion, its laid-off Montreal devs were told they "would receive the smallest severance legally possible" and "immediately" lose health insurance benefits, union says.

On July 17, Xbox-owned Bethesda announced a whole bunch of stuff about the future of Fallout and, more distantly, The Elder Scrolls and Starfield. That same day, studio union OneBGS says devs hit by recent layoffs at Bethesda's Montreal branch were told that their severance pay would be as low as legally possible despite the billions in profit recorded by parent Microsoft and investment in the IP they helped build.

In a post on Bluesky, OneBGS - Bethesda Game Studios Union claims, "Montreal workers are being treated especially poorly by XBOX and we won’t stand for it."

The union says that, when the layoffs were announced on July 6, employees "across the US and Canada were told via video call" that they would "remain employed until September while the company negotiated severance with our union."

The union says the "breathing room" these terms provided evaporated on July 17. Behind the Fallout info explosion, the union says Xbox "told their laid-off Bethesda Montreal employees that they would receive the smallest severance legally possible without bargaining with the union."

This news reportedly came via "termination letters" delivered via email. The union says this left affected employees with "the bare legal minimum in terms of severance: eight weeks of pay in lieu of the minimum legal notice, any outstanding vacation pay, etc."

Additionally, the union says impacted staff "were to also immediately lose their group benefits health insurance."

In response, the union has filed "yet another legal complaint against Bethesda," alleging it continues to "violate labor laws in Canada."

"Bethesda and XBOX leadership depend on our labour to make them millions, and yet when we do, we are disposed of," the union concludes. "The cycle of workers paying for the mistakes of management ends here."

This news was shared on Bluesky by Bethesda lead character artist Ben Carnow, who adds, "Microsoft did not negotiate with the Union over layoffs in Montreal as they are legally required to do. Folks lost their healthcare with zero notice. Unconscionable."

The union's post also links to feedback listed under Xbox's new "Player Voice" forum. The post collectively calls out the thousands of Xbox staff and developers that Microsoft has laid off in just a few years, demands executive penalties and accountability (like "no executive bonuses when there is a layoff"), asks for an end to layoffs, and requests "transparency for players."

The United Videogame Workers CWA union, an industry-wide organization, previously argued that the Fallout 5 and Elder Scrolls 6 news was meant to distract from the blows dealt to Bethesda employees in the background.

"The timing of this kind of press is intentional," the UVW-CWA said. "How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds? Don’t fall for it."

Amid the rubble of the layoffs across Xbox, which included numerous positions at Bethesda and ZeniMax, the remaining developers on The Elder Scrolls Online are starting to struggle. The MMO is one of numerous projects impacted by Microsoft's restructuring of its games division, with only a fraction of the staff attached now as opposed to prior.

To mitigate their own workload, devs on The Elder Scrolls Online are making changes to what features are available to players. As of today, July 22, that includes in-game purchases, since the ability to do so through the official site has been removed.

"To help manage workload, we have decided to remove the Web Crown Store from the official elderscrollsonline.com website," reads a message from Kevin Gbolie, community manager on ESO, on the official forum.

"The ability to acquire crowns via the website will remain," he says, "and, of course, this does not affect the items that will be offered on the Crown Store in The Elder Scrolls Online, you will just need to login into the game to view and purchase the latest offerings."

It's noted that the blog for showing off what's in the Crown Store will change as well, due to "team bandwidth." In response to comments on these changes, Gbolie mentions that while the new version of the blog is still being sorted out, it'll definitely come with a bullet list of new items.

This is unfortunate because the high-res screenshots accompanying the items were used by the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, and Gbolie even mentions the team is aware of that symbiosis. But alas, the time and energy just aren't there any more.

"The team responsible for the blog and those screenshots doesn't have the capacity to provide those at the scale we could before," he writes in another post. "But we will provide what we can for now and adjust from there."

It is a sad time for Bethesda, ZeniMax, this game, and the legacy behind it. These devs deserve better, but at least the game is still going – for now.

Bethesda reportedly canceled an unannounced PvP shooter, likely from Wolfenstein dev MachineGames.

A former Bethesda employee has revealed that the publisher was working on an unannounced PVP shooter which was eventually canceled.

The employee, who was included in Xbox's latest wave of layoffs that hit the publisher, included details about his 12-year tenure at Bethesda on his LinkedIn profile (via Twitter user Timur222), which included a detail from his role as an associate producer that reads: "Supported production on an unannounced PvP FPS title (subsequently canceled), contributing to scheduling and cross-team coordination."

However, that's pretty much all there is in terms of info for this title. Keep in mind the dev worked at Bethesda Softworks, not Bethesda Game Studios – the studio developing Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles – so there's a ton of possibilities.

One throughline in the resume is working with Machine Games on Wolfenstein games, and while the studio most recently released Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, there was a rumored FPS title in the works. In a Bethesda roadmap leaked in 2023, there was a title called "Project Platinum," which Giant Bomb founder Jeff Gerstmann identified as a Machine Games title in the vein of Rainbow Six Siege or Counter-Strike.

Over a year ago, Timur222 also spotted a "Canceled unannounced project" on the LinkedIn page of another MachineGames employee, giving the idea that this was Project Platinum a little more evidence, given it fits within the 2021 - 2025 timeframe.

Earlier this year, rumors emerged that MachineGames had begun work on Wolfenstein 3, after eight years and two spinoffs since Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus' ending, which felt like it was the beginning of something big (I mean, you gotta kill Mecha Hitler, right?).

Since the layoffs, word has emerged that Bethesda is set to focus on its "strongest franchises," which includes Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein. And while wanting to focus on Doom and Quake while destroying the studio behind them is certainly a move, the news does suggest that Wolfenstein 3 is safe from cancellation for now.

Doom developer id Software "is essentially dead," Duke Nukem 3D co-creator says after layoffs

Fallout 3 designer Bruce Nesmith previously shared his hopes that a remaster of the game would make the combat better than it was in 2008.

Last week, Bethesda dropped a load of info about its post-apocalyptic RPG series: Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," New Vegas developer Obsidian is returning to the series for a new entry, and Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters.

Granted, this felt a bit like jingling keys to distract from Microsoft's massive wave of layoffs – something one workers' union has already called out – but it's naturally a very exciting prospect to fans.

Speaking to FRVR around the time The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered released in 2025, Nesmith shared his thoughts about a potential remaster of Fallout 3, admitting that the gunplay in the 2008 RPG is "not good."

"It didn’t hold up to shooters at the time," he explained, "a lot of work was done on that for Fallout 4."

And it's true, Fallout 4 did feel more akin to what would be a traditional first-person shooter of that era, making it so players didn't have to rely on the V.A.T.S. quite as much.

"I anticipate seeing a lot of that work [we did with Fallout 4] go into it [Fallout 3 Remastered]," Nesmith explained. And granted, Oblivion Remastered did make some changes to the combat compared to the 2006 original, namely giving new movesets to the melee weapons. So perhaps Bethesda will end up making the shooting in Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) feel more like Fallout 4.

Modders remastering Fallout 3 in Fallout 4 are not bothered by Bethesda's official version: "Our project has been a community-driven passion project for almost a full decade"

A group of Fallout 4 modders who call themselves the Fallout 4: Capital Wasteland Team have released a statement saying that they intend to continue work on their mod, which aims to rebuild Fallout 3 inside Fallout 4, despite Bethesda announcing that Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are in development.

In a statement released on Twitter, the team says that while they are excited for the upcoming remasters, the Capital Wasteland mod will continue development and the project is completely separate from Bethesda Game Studios and its work.

"The F4CW Team is incredibly excited to see Fallout 3 officially receiving a remaster and we can't wait to see what they have in store," the statement begins. "That said, we'd also like to reassure our community that F4CW is continuing development. Our project has been a community-driven passion project for almost a full decade now, and we're committed to seeing that our work, creativity and dedication continue!"

The modding team is consists of dozens of contributors, and progress is very slow. It is very likely that, despite 10 years of development time invested in the mod, the official Bethesda games will launch before the full project is complete. However, from previously released updates it appears that Capital Wasteland is something very different from a typical remaster anyway.

Fallout: New Vegas director says RPGs should be messy and force players to make hard decisions: "No person can fix everything"

I was a late bloomer to Fallout. I saw it aplenty in the magazines during the late 1990s, but it wasn't until a year after Fallout 3's 2008 release that I loaded it into my PlayStation 3 console, and it became my late Game of the Year. Playing a title that was a mix of first-person shooter and RPG genres was a new feeling for me; the feeling of awe was something I hadn't felt since I first played Half-Life in 2000.

Like all my favorite games, I purposely stop playing them for a long while to maintain that feeling of surprise and joy each time I return. Metal Gear Solid 2, Half-Life 2, and Tomb Raider are a few of these titles for me, and Fallout 3 quickly joined their ranks. But as the years passed, it became harder to play the game. I didn't own an Xbox, and my PC was out of action. Thanks to Crossover, a macOS app that lets me play a bunch of Windows games on my Mac, I can play Fallout 3 again – but as a day one Switch 2 owner, I've been dying to play it on my new Nintendo console. That dream might actually become a reality now that a Fallout 3 remaster has been officially confirmed by Bethesda.

New Nuka Cola, but with a Switch 2 taste

I've loved owning a Switch 2 since its June 2025 launch. The previous model was also a day-one buy, and could always be found in my backpack. The same applies to the latest console. Now I can play my existing games with a glossier finish, as well as new games that couldn't run on the original Switch.

But while it's been fun to play Street Fighter 6, Kirby Air Riders, and plenty of the other best Switch 2 games out there already, I'm dying to know whether the Fallout 3 remaster will make the jump. I know I could wait for Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition, which is already confirmed for Switch 2. But I've always preferred the third entry to to 2015's Fallout 4 due to the graphics and the RPG elements and will accept no substitute.

It's July 2026, more than a year on since the Switch 2 debuted, and up until Bethesda revealed the official remaster alongside an update on Fallout 5, I'd been wondering why Nintendo hadn't delivered its own Fallout 3 port yet. Now that the remaster is officially in the works, there's little need for a Switch 2 port – if the Fallout 3 remaster launches on the console at all, that is. I hope it does; it would be a match made in radioactive heaven.

Liberty Prime with an extra shine

If the Fallout 3 remaster did make its way to Switch 2, I'd love to see features like less loading times, more NPCs across the open wasteland, and, as a treat, a redesigned inventory system that uses the Switch 2's touchscreen.

Combining it with a fresh coat of paint that’s similar to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered could be a great way to lessen one of the few pain points I've always had with Fallout 3. I've found the method of arranging every bit of loot to be a cumbersome process. But just having it ready to play on-the-go via my Nintendo handheld, regardless of having that option available now via Steam Deck, sounds incredibly enticing to me.

With the sim-spinoff Fallout Shelter having been available on Nintendo Switch consoles since 2018, Fallout 3 seems primed for the platform. We're in an era where there's a Fallout TV series as well, which still feels surreal. It's really good, too, and with its second season having wrapped up in early February, it feels like the stars are aligning for the Fallout 3 remaster to come to Switch 2.

As I'm reaching the four-year mark since I last played Fallout 3, I'd love to go back into the world again on my Switch 2 instead of having to carry my Mac around for the pleasure. By all means, I'd do it anyway. But to help my back and my Mac's battery life, it'd be great if Bethesda sees my plight and adds it to the voices. It's time for Fallout 3 to join the Switch 2 party – I'll bring the Nuka-Cola.

Check out the best Fallout games of all time, from spinoffs to mainline entries.

As some fans are filled with dread following Bethesda's confirmation that both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 are being developed using the shiny new Creation Engine 3, words from New Vegas lead Josh Sawyer from six years ago might provide some reassurance.

Since Bethesda's flurry of news last week about its upcoming projects, there have been many concerns raised about the studio using Creation Engine 3 – an updated version of its proprietary engine – for the two biggest RPGs on its slate. Fans worry about bugs and the devs potentially prioritizing modders over the games themselves, but according to Sawyer in 2020 that's now doing the online rounds, it's actually a very easy engine to work with.

During an old stream of Fallout: New Vegas (below), Sawyer was asked if he had "a hard time" developing New Vegas thanks to Fallout 3's "buggy engine," to which he was quick to respond: "No, not at all."

He continued: "I will criticize other stuff in Fallout 3 and 4, [but] this engine is incredibly easy to make content for. Look into my eyes – without GECK [New Vegas' official editor and modding tool] and without the pipeline of this engine, we never would have finished this game in 18 months."

Sawyer reiterated that "this is the best content creation pipeline of any game that I've ever worked on, easily," but that doesn't mean it's without its issues. "It's buggy, you're right, it's very buggy. It's buggy and unstable and it's frustrating, but it's incredibly easy to make content for. Like, no one's gonna sit here and say, like, 'No it's not that buggy.' Like, yeah, it's pretty buggy, but it's fine. Like, that's a trade-off."

He went on to talk about the GECK tool, too, calling it "fast" and saying that "searching is super easy, finding references to things is super easy, scripting is very powerful," and that "iteration loops are super fast." All that made it "awesome."

In fact, Sawyer said that "the only shortcoming of the tools was the dialogue tool." He explained: "We built our own dialogue tool to sit on top of that, and that was fine. Like, it took a little bit of investment for us, but that was it."

Looking back about what Sawyer had to say about the ease of Creation Engine and how quickly things could be made with it, I can't help but wonder if that might be on Bethesda's mind today. After all, last month, it was reported that Xbox is apparently pushing for faster development on The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises – something which might prove even more difficult now that a number of Bethesda staff have been laid off.

Needless to say, if a familiar-feeling, easy-to-use engine can help facilitate the demand for more games, it's little wonder that that's the one that's been chosen.

16 years after Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian is returning to the post-apocalyptic RPG series and Todd Howard "could not be more excited."

Todd Howard warns he is no longer thinking of retiring, he will persist until the end of days, asking you to buy Skyrim - and to release a few more games, we imagine.

Todd Howard has been at Bethesda Game Studios since 1994, when it was creating Terminator games, making a massive splash on the studio's popularity after taking on the director's role for The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, the game that established the Bethesda RPG for years to come.

Since then, he's directed Fallout 3, 4, Skyrim, and Starfield. And while he's only in his mid-50's now, by the time his Game Director roles on The Elder Scrolls 6 and presumably Fallout 5 come to an end, he'll likely be nearing retirement age.

Speaking to Jason Schreier, Howard is asked about his eventual retirement and says, "The truth is there was a period of time a while back where I pondered what does it look like? Not is it imminent, but what does it look like? And I no longer do."

He explains, "I see the work we're doing. I just love it. I love working with these people. It's really not something I think about."

Howard adds, "Some folks in our industry that are a little older than me, they're just making great stuff, too. So, it's not something I've been thinking about."

One such name who is a "little older" is Hideo Kojima, who on his 60th birthday just under three years ago said he has no plans to retire, and wishes to create things for the rest of his life. But worry not for now, Todd Howard will be around to sell you copies of Skyrim on PS6 and Xbox Project Helix.

Elder Scrolls and Fallout boss Todd Howard says "you'd be surprised how many great ideas I get" from Reddit.

Not everyone is feeling optimistic about The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 following Bethesda's confirmation that both are being developed using the studio's proprietary Creation Engine, albeit an updated version.

Last week, Bethesda dropped a slew of information, including confirmation that Fallout 5 is in pre-production, that Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters are in the works, and that Obsidian Entertainment is teaming up with the studio on a whole new Fallout game. Amongst all that was the announcement that both Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6 are being built on Creation Engine 3, "a shared technology platform we've been building since Starfield's launch. It allows our teams to support multiple projects simultaneously with new tools, rendering, and systems that define our games."

Speaking to Windows Central, Todd Howard states that "I can't say enough about our tech team," calling it "incredible." He adds: "Our designers ask for so much crazy stuff, and our tech team finds a way to do it. And I think that's really defined our games where you feel like anything is possible."

Despite Howard's words, however, not all fans are thrilled about the news. "The creation engine is fun for modders but it is complete dogshit compared to most other big game studios' engines," one Reddit user responds. "Time and time again it has led to crap games that feel outdated on release day. Their games really suffer from trying to please modders above all else."

"Code for 'games are gonna release in an absolute buggy mess, and we just expect the players to fix it for us,'" another writes. "Bugs and Bethesda. A tale as old as time."

Many have specifically expressed concerns about how many loading screens the two RPGs might have, with one speculating on Twitter that the choice of engine "means they will very likely both still require loading screens when entering Interiors. I think this is one of the biggest weaknesses of Bethesda games, it really does feel outdated…"

Another on Reddit adds: "Bethesda seriously needs to get the load screens under control for TES VI and Fallout 5 (and presumably the Obsidian Fallout title). Small buildings still requiring load screens in the late 2020s would look bad, period."

With that said, not everyone is disappointed with the decision. "People hate the engine but no other game engine comes close to the modding ability," says a Reddit fan, as another comments: "This is a boon for future modders!" Meanwhile, some are just happy that it's not one particular alternative: "I'm just glad we won't see yet another studio subsumed into the Unreal ecosystem."

There's an air of uncertainty surrounding the Bethesda projects in general following the studio being hit in Xbox's recent wave of layoffs. Devs affected previously said that it's going to be "harder than ever now" for the studio to focus on those two core franchises after losing so much talent.

Bethesda says The Elder Scrolls 6 is going great, actually: "We're where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day."

Bethesda Game Studios boss Todd Howard has revealed he's constantly lurking on Reddit and claims the team is consistently taking that feedback on board.

In a thread on r/Games, Howard chimed in with his first Reddit post since the launch of Starfield – well aside from reacting to one post six months ago that modded a cardboard cutout of him into Fallout 4 as the immortal snail – saying "Hey Reddit. I’m a professional lurker and read your comments all the time."

And given Reddit's reactions to Bethesda games at times – just look at any New Vegas thread – this may have sounded vaguely threatening, but Howard adds, "Many here do and we deeply appreciate all the passion for our work."

The thread in question was the post from Bethesda outlining the future of the studio. This post included news about how Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters, Obsidian is making a new Fallout game, and an update on the production of The Elder Scrolls 6. Howard explains, "Today’s info was an attempt at changing that and letting everyone know what we’ve been working on the past several years, and a look at what’s coming. So know we’re constantly listening and keep telling us how to be even better."

Howard also added, "You’d be surprised how many great ideas I get from Reddit. So upvote your favorite and we’ll do it. Maybe."

Unsurprisingly, fans really want Oblivion Remastered to be fixed after a year. One user says, "Please get Virtuous to keep patching Oblivion and give it as much love as you guys gave Skyrim, because it feels abandoned right now, which is a shame."

Meanwhile, another has fears that the upcoming Fallout remasters will share a similar fate, saying, "Pay Virtuous whatever amount needed for the remasters to function well."

Only 16 Fallout: New Vegas developers still work at Obsidian, says RPG's original writer.

Bethesda just announced a whole lot of news about the future of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and if you find the timing of it all a bit suspicious, you're not alone. United Videogame Workers-CWA says the announcement is an "intentional" distraction from the layoffs happening at Bethesda.

"The timing of this kind of press is intentional," UVW-CWA says in a Bluesky post. "How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds? Don’t fall for it."

UVW-CWA is a direct-join union representing game workers across the industry, but it does not represent any one specific workplace. The CWA part of the name is for the Communications Workers of America, which supports several workplace unions at various Microsoft-owned game studios, including Bethesda.

The timing of this kind of press is intentional. How are they going to make these games when Bethesda and Obsidian collectively laid off hundreds? Don’t fall for it.

— @videogameworkers.bsky.social (@videogameworkers.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T20:21:37.854Z

Employees across Microsoft's gaming divisions staged protests last week in support of those affected by the Xbox layoffs. Game Developer reports that unions are also taking legal action against Microsoft.

According to CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth, "The unions CWA and CWA Canada have jointly filed unfair labor practice complaints against Microsoft alleging the company has unlawfully fired people without giving notice to or discussing it with the union as the employer is legally obliged to do when we are in the middle of ongoing bargaining [for] a collective agreement."

For her part, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is celebrating the historic success of Bethesda's various franchises on Twitter. "The achievements of these franchises are remarkable: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has crossed 65 million units sold, becoming one of the 10 best-selling games of all time, Fallout 4 has also crossed 35 million units sold, joining the top 25, and Starfield will soon reach over 1 billion hours played," she says.

But at a certain point, you have to start asking whether the developers who actually made those games have actually seen the fruits of their success. Certainly, they're not getting royalties – come on, this is the video game industry – but many aren't even getting to enjoy continued employment. We've only gotten anecdotal details on individuals who have been laid off, but we know their numbers include Christiane Meister, a 27-year veteran of everything from Morrowind to Fallout 4, and Dane Olds, a 20-year vet with a similar list of credits.

But hey, Fallout 5 is coming! And The Elder Scrolls 6! And Obsidian's making a new Fallout game of its own, finally – never mind the reports that Microsoft canceled the studio's Avowed follow-up in order to have it build something for the far more popular franchise. I'm certain that the developers who remain at these studios are putting their all into their work, but it's tough to see today's announcement as much more than Microsoft's attempt at jingling keys in front of the eyes of gamers who've grown increasingly exhausted of the industry's most cynical business practices.

Todd Howard says layoffs at Bethesda were "really tough": "We're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises."

I'm sure nobody needs to be told that Bethesda's seminal RPG Skyrim is a best-seller. I mean, you don't get ported as much without having sustaining market value. But what may be surprising to hear is that The Witcher 3 has actually out-sold the dragon-heavy adventure, at least according to figures provided by the studio.

During a time of turmoil for the company and the industry as a whole, due to Xbox's widespread layoffs, Bethesda provided an official update on social media. Buried in the post, which touches on Fallout, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls 6 and more, is a little milestone for the latter's fifth mainline installment.

"With over 65 million copies sold, players are still exploring Skyrim 15 years later, but we know it’s been a very long wait for the sequel," the company writes. "The next chapter is on the way. We’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day."

65 million copies; that's a lot. It's an amount most developers can only dream about. But then, most developers aren't Todd Howard and his team of quest-creators and dungeon masters.

If you're wondering where that ranks in terms of all-time sales, it places Skyrim in eighth, directly behind Terraria, and just ahead of Super Mario Bros on the NES. And it's actually tied with Geralt of Rivia's landmark outing, The Witcher 3.

CD Projekt Red confirmed The Witcher 3 had shifted 65 million copies in May of this year. It and Skyrim may have done so around the same time, even. But what's crucial to remember here is that The Elder Scrolls 5 had a four year head start, coming out in 2011 (I know, I know), whereas The Witcher 3 arrived in 2015.

I don't mean to cause drama here, but that sounds like a challenge. Todd, another port is in order. Make Skyrim the launch game on the next Xbox. That should do it. I mean, unless The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be around by then - but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction": Bethesda breaks silence on long-awaited RPG