Pete Hines: 'Bethesda is Part of Something That is Not Authentic and is Not Genuine' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 12 April 2026 / 3,905 Views
The former head of publishing at Bethesda Pete Hines left in 2023 after it was acquired by Microsoft in a couple of years earlier and in an interview with Firezide Chat said he left because the company "part of something that is not authentic and is not genuine."
"It was really hard to walk away from [my team] and not get to see them on a regular basis," said Hines (via VideoGamesChronicle). "At the same time, I also hit a point of realizing I could not spend the rest of my life doing something that wasn’t for me. It was for everybody else, which is what I was doing.
"I was staying there because this place still needs me. 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 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 added he was waiting until the release of Starfield before leaving Bethesda.
"Every time Todd delayed Starfield, I thought, fuck, I’m here another eight months," he said. "And Todd was the only one who knew."
He was at first excited for Bethesda to become part of Xbox as he was a fan and held them in high regard until he saw how it actually worked.
"That was the worst part," said Hines. "Yeah, that was the worst fucking part. It was to join a place that I genuinely was a fan of and people there I genuinely held in high regard and esteem, and then to get there and see how it actually worked.
"To talk is something, right? But I’m very much about what is the follow up to that? Do you mean what you say? Or are you just saying shit that sounds good and then as soon as you leave this room that’s completely forgotten? Because that is not how we ever operated at Bethesda.
"And that’s not to say everything we said, we did. Yeah, we probably didn’t fucking come close to that, but that was absolutely our intention. We are going to do what we say and say what we do and be genuine and be authentic.
"And truthfully, I still think Bethesda is just part of something that is not authentic and is not genuine. And that shouldn’t be a surprise to you."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Duh, anyone who thought Bethesda would remain good after the acquisition was delusional. Microslop will always be a shitty company.
Did you coin Microslop? If so, congrats. That's a good one.
That one has been around as long as "slop" has been the de riguer insult for garbage in the digital world. I've spent decades hearing them called Microsucks and Microshit, not to mention decades of dollar signs replacing the S.
It's rare for a company to be purchased by a bigger company or private equity and have it be better of for the employees.
Ehh.... Everyone constantly complained about Bethesda in the years leading up to the acquisition. So, I don't think it is reasonable to blame MS for fucking them up.
Welp. Confirms what a lot of people suspected about the MS thing.
Rare could have told them that decades before MS swallowed Bethesda.
Of course it's inauthentic and not genuine, it's Microsoft.
All this does is confirm that basically post Kinnect, which is ages ago, Xbox has been every bit as awful at managing its development teams as we thought. And that Phil really didn't do much of anything to turn that around.
But given what Microsoft did during the Xbox One and now Xbox Series generations - announcing multiple games, staffing up, contracting studios, only to cancel half of it and cause multiple developers to close - this isn't even surprising.
They weren't all that good at managing their studios before Kinect, either. It's just that their largest competitor in the gaming space had shot themselves in the foot with a Howitzer. Rare was a shell of its former self within a few years after the MS acquisition. Level-5 vowed never to work with Microsoft again after True Fantasy Live Online got canned.
Ouch..
Someones mad. Iv been loving everything Bethesda has brought out outside of acouple games. Doom: Dark Ages, Indiana Jones, Star Field, Fallout TV show, just to name afew, aslong as they keep bringing the games.
Pete Hines always seemed like the real deal to me. Admire ppl like that
The only thing inauthentic is Hines - he was running Bethesda into the ground with terrible games chasing GAS projects - if MS hadn't stepped in they would not be here now
Definitely a Karen.
