Kotaku, some developers Bethesda accusing the company of imposing certain deadlines unsustainable crisis working on fallout 76made worse by the seemingly bad staff and project management.
“Nobody wanted to be a part of this project because it ate people. destroyed people“said a former Fallout 76 developer.”The number of people interested in this project and then leaving Bethesda is quite high.“.
The report talks about prolonged periods of crisis in the months before the game’s release. 10 hours a day, six days a week Prior to the launch of the beta on November 14, 2018, as we know, it was not warmly received due to the large number of issues present.
In this context, the report also cites testimonies from some QA testing personnel who said they were often asked to work overtime, even if in reality their contributions were completely useless. For example, there is talk that a tester was asked to work on weekends because the latest version of the game needed a fix. The tester would later discover that the development team had not implemented the fix and any work done on the wrong compilation would be useless.
Also, Fallout 76’s former QA Testers claim that overtime is highly rewarded and “even free pizza is offered” during shifts, but the working conditions are so stressful that the game isn’t worth the candle.
“We worked overtime but all the money in the world doesn’t matter at that point… They bought us pizza while we were working on the weekends… You know, it takes time to get out of a certain mindset and out of a certain mindset. be aware, yes, they give us something for free, but it’s not worth it. And it’s pretty much the same as overtime pay. Yes, that’s more money. But at any cost?‘ says one of the testers.
Among the sources of stress for QA Testers, in addition to their grueling work shifts, were numerous criticisms of the players. death threatsand the constant pressure of being supervised by superiors: There is also talk of scheduled breaks and employees being checked when they go to the toilet.
Adding to the annoyance, Kotaku reports on how Bethesda manages Fallout 76’s management far from optimal, inevitably transferring developers from all parts of Zenimax to revive the game’s fortunes. reflections on the development of other projects Like Redfall and Starfield.
Some of Kotaku’s sources claim that the teams had no consistent direction for Fallout 76 during its early development cycle. One of these states Todd Howard He was supposed to be in charge of the game, but spent most of his time working on Starfield, which he reportedly began development after the release of Fallout 4 in 2015.
A source told Kotaku that his subordinates called Howard. “seagull” because he wasn’t actively involved in the project until “then it flew away and rats all over the place”, wreaking havoc on the design team. Another source believed Howard was a good executive producer, but he has a “bigger is better” design philosophy that sometimes backfires.
Also, according to Kotaku sources, Bethesda’s management did not anticipate the difficulties of producing a game like Fallout 76 and assumed they would appoint veteran “rock star” developers with extensive experience in the Elder Scrolls and single-player Fallout to the Fallout 76 team. We did not have any difficulties making a live game, but as we know it was not enough.
In addition to the issues with QA Testing, some designers have expressed concerns about issues such as grief, multiplayer stability issues, and mission checkpoints, but explain this and the reasons why. concerns denied or postponed by management.
In Kotaku’s long report, we also mention how the Creation Engine doesn’t adapt well to live service multiplayer, causing a lot of unexpected technical issues. Even the newspaper’s sources indicate that Fallout 76 actually all required QA Tests and that the issues at launch were well known to the studio, but that it was impossible to fix them all before the game was released. The development team knew very well that this would disappoint fans and wished to delay it, but that never happened.
For the time being, Bethesda has not released any official comments regarding the information reported in the Kotaku article.
Source: Multiplayer
