dragontology

It’s a hard truth, but Bethesda has become way too bloated, and they’ve had years to fix their shit.

Their most recent Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are MMOs, it’s almost like they’ve given up on the single player experience.

Starfield came out after both Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls Online. It released missing features, and had bugs they intentionally ignored. Then they basically abandoned it. A year later, they released a half assed DLC. Then abandoned it again. There were a couple minor updates, and then fairly recently, another half assed DLC. Meanwhile Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online get a couple big expansions a year.

Obviously F76 and TESO print money, but, that’s why I have no sympathy for Bethesda. They’ve gotten so far from what made them great. Their last single player games in those franchises, Skyrim (2011, 16 years ago) and Fallout 4 (2015, 11 years ago) are mere shadows of their predecessors. They had some big ideas, but they also had some big bugs.

You can say “obviously F76 and TESO print money so they must be doing something right,” but then you can’t beg sympathy from the single-player fans.

It’s not gut-wrenching. Xbox overextended itself and it hasn’t paid off for them. Bethesda has been putting out slop for over a decade. While I will agree the wrong ones were let go (Todd Howard should have been cut loose ages ago, like after Skyrim), this was necessary. Xbox taking Fallout 5 from Bethesda (they still have F76) was just the icing on the cake. Obsidian made the most recent good Fallout game… in 2010. Then they made The Outer Worlds, a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas. Even the fan-productions Enderal and The Forgotten City, both based on Skyrim, are better games. Skyrim had dragons, but given the scope of Oblivion before it, they missed the mark, despite it printing money.

In short, Bethesda lost the plot and I have no sympathy for the company, only for the people who were let go. I hope they find work. But I do not have hope that Bethesda will recover. Their best days are two whole decades ago. Oblivion and Fallout 3.

There really is an easy solution to this. Firmware locking, like how phones do. Like how if you steal my iPhone, you can’t use it because it’s tied to my Apple account, and you don’t have the password.

Tie each Steam Controller purchase to a Steam Account. Lock it to that account for one year. After the year, the user can connect the Steam Controller to their computer running Steam, and unlock the firmware.

This would make it so the scalpers wouldn’t be able to resell them. Well, they still would, but once word gets out that it’s locked to their account for a whole year, two things will happen. One, they’re gonna lie and say it’s unlocked and they’ll rip a bunch of people off and no one will trust them. Two, they will offer to be your agent, you will need to give them access to your Steam account so they can buy it for you and then sell it to you.

The problem with the latter, and the Steam controller in general, is the thing is $100, and with everything going up, you can get a better controller for half that or less — you just don’t get the trackpads. But, give it time. Someone else will add them, and then you can get basically the same thing without contributing directly to Gaben’s eighth yacht, or his ego.

This question gets a lot more complicated if you allow custom firmware discussion, e.g. of Android phones.

My Galaxy S3 had a nice one, but it almost certainly was not from the stock firmware. I remember a glowing ring that would fill up.

Here’s the thing though: they’re gonna run ads, and GamePass Ultimate isn’t going back to $15 and the Series X isn’t going back to $500.

Sony can say “no ads on PlayStation”, but they will just jack prices up again. They aren’t the good guys here.