Tag: Rage

2019 Developer Report Cards: Bethesda Softworks


There should be no surprises in this report card.

Bethesda’s performance in 2019 indicates a company that has become wholly incompetent and is either incapable of or unwilling to fix its flaws, but instead has chosen time and time again to double down on everything that it does wrong and throw consequence into the wind. Let’s look at Bethesda’s 2019 release record:

  1. Fallout 76 – I could spend hours writing about how Fallout 76 continued its uncontrolled blaze in 2019. Of the numerous screw ups in 2019, perhaps the most insulting comes in the form of Bethesda delaying the Wastelanders update, that big content dump that was supposed to add in the human NPCs and do…something. Instead Bethesda shat out a paid service for which the services people paid for straight up didn’t work. I have long since given up on the people still spending money on Fallout 76. If you get fleeced by Bethesda, you have no one to blame but yourself.
  2. The Elder Scrolls: Blades – It doesn’t surprise me at all that Elder Scrolls Blades is a commercial success considering in the mobile sphere you could feed people the video game equivalent of asbestos and they will happily throw tons of money at you and ask for more. At the end of the day it is still a low quality, low effort facsimile of an Elder Scrolls game that punishes you for playing it and always has its hands out for another tenner.
  3. Rage 2 – Does anyone even remember that Rage 2 released in 2019? Rage 2 peaked at 13 thousand players on Steam and in one month more than 85% of those people dropped off and went to play something else. Reviews point to Rage 2 being boring, repetitive, and short. Rage 2 also implements a ridiculously convoluted system to buy DLC expansion. You can’t buy the expansion outright, you have to buy bundles of Rage Coins and use those. The first expansion costs 1,500 Rage Coins ($15) but you can’t buy 1500 Rage Coins, you have to buy the 500 RC pack and 1,100 RC pack which is $15 anyway and leaves you with 100 RC left over.
  4. Wolfenstein Youngblood – On the subject of things nobody asked for, Wolfenstein Youngblood comes hot on the heels of The New Colossus dividing Wolfenstein fans. Youngblood released at half the cost of Rage 2, which doesn’t quite explain how the game managed to hit less than half the peak number of players. Youngblood was a smattering of bad ideas; Obnoxious protagonists? Check. Forced coop with awful AI? Check. Obtuse RPG mechanics in a shooter? Check. Microtransactions? Of course.
  5. Wolfenstein Cyberpilot – And speaking of things nobody asked for, how about a game that nobody purchased? Cyberpilot is a VR spinoff that peaked on Steam at 24 users. That’s not a mistake, twenty four user peak at launch for a game that costs $20 and so far could only convince 92 people to leave a review. And this was a collaboration between Machine Games and Arkane Studios! Not enough players at peak to fill up a Battlefield server and only 36% approval.
  6. Commander Keen – As of this writing (November 13), there has not been hide nor hair of the mobile Commander Keen game since it was unveiled at E3, but I am going to talk about it because it is germaine to the conversation. Nobody wants Commander Keen on mobile, and Bethesda’s embarrassing announcement trailer was unlisted because of the dislike ratio. None of the Keen social media accounts have been updated at all since the announcement. If Commander Keen the mobile game was silently killed off, it would do less damage to the franchise than releasing it.

Bethesda (and its subsidiaries) shoveled out more unwanted garbage in 2019 than any company with its size, franchises, and experience ever should. The Fallout 76 team has shown nothing but incompetence over the entire year, not to mention a complete lack of caring for systematic and repeated lies made to the public. Their releases in many cases not only floundered, but may have done long term damage to their associated brands. In the case of Rage 2, you have the most disappointing awaited sequel since Dambuster messed up Homefront. For Cyberpilot, a low-effort attempt at cashing in on a trend. In Commander Keen? The shameless skinning of a beloved old IP.

With all of that considered, I have to give Bethesda in 2019 the grade of: