Following the release of Starfield back in 2023, one of the long-time faces of the publisher announced he was wandering off into the great retirement beyond. Pete Hines, who was head of publishing at the Fallout and Elder Scrolls maker, said at the time that walking away was “not a decision I came to easily or quickly”, but that “the time is right”. He’s now expanded on what went into his exit, painting a picture that reflects far less rosily on Bethesda’s current corporate overlords Microsoft, though the megacorp aren’t explictly namedropped.

“I was staying there because this place still needs me,” Hines told Firezide Chat. “I just hit a point of yes, it needs me, and I am powerless to do what I think needs to be done to run this place properly, to protect these people, to maintain what we worked so hard to create, which is an incredibly efficient, well run video game developer and publisher.

“And when I was unable to do what I thought my job should involve in continuing to have that place be, you know, if not the most efficient publisher in the game industry, it was way the fuck up there. And when I couldn’t protect it, and I saw how it was getting damaged and broken apart and frankly mistreated, abused, whatever word you want to use, I said I am not going to sit here and watch this happen right in front of me. I think I’ve done everything I can do. This is not when I wanted it to end or how I wanted it to end, but that’s not really up to me. And at a certain point, truthfully, my mental health was so deplorable that I just said I cannot.”

Hines went on to say that he planned to leave after Starfield was out, as he alluded to in his statement back in 2023, but revealed that it wasn’t a case of the space RPG’s release being the happy culminating point when he made the call his career had been nicely tied up. “I knew I was leaving the year before,” he said. “Every time Todd delayed Starfield, I thought, fuck, I’m here another eight months. And Todd was the only one who knew. It’s another reason I love that man. He showed up for me when I was just at my wit’s end and got me through that, and got me out of there in a way that I still retained my sanity.”

While not mentioning Bethesda’s owners Microsoft by name as the source of his frustrations, Hines did make clear that he thinks Bethesda are currently “just part of something that is not authentic and is not genuine”, having previously been a publisher who strove to make sure they backed up what they said about their games with action, even if they didn’t always deliver in that regard.

Despite his frustrations towards the end, Hines made clear that he still holds plenty of people working at Bethesda beyond his Toddliness in high regard, specifically mentioning global marketing and comms vice president Erin Losi as someone he misses seeing on a daily basis. He also specified at one point during the discussion, which segued into Hines’ childhood, the he doesn’t just like Todd Howard because Todd’s not very tall, but that he does “totally get how tall Todd is because that’s how tall [Hines] felt growing up”.

Honestly, as a fairly tall bloke, I can’t say I’ve ever thought about that perspective when imagining what it’s like to not have to worry as much about banging my head on doorframes.