Xbox Game Studios: Crunch times at Bethesda are over according to Matt Booty

As head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty is confident that Bethesda’s crunch days are over.

Crunch times are probably the worst time for game developers. They are just before the release of a game and sometimes mean unreasonable overtime for the development teams, in which they have to give 200% so that deadlines can be met.

Bethesda also had times like this when developing Fallout 76 or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. But those times are over, says Matt Booty, who, as head of Xbox Game Studios, watches over all connected studios.

In a company-wide, internal Q&A meeting, Booty addressed this topic, how kotaku reported. Booty was approached about a Kotaku article discussing the crunch in Fallout 76 and initially said:

“The challenge with many of these reports is that they look backwards, sometimes quite far into the past.”

That crunch culture is “just part of the industry,” Booty claims. But he doesn’t say that as a justification, but because it was a part and he himself slept under the desk at the beginning of his career, which was probably considered a kind of honor at the time.

However, these times are over at Bethesda under the leadership of Xbox.

“I know from talking to Bethesda leadership that we don’t have a situation where people are crunching and we have this bullying atmosphere… I’m very confident about that.”

Of course, a crunch could also take place without his knowledge. Therefore, he asks employees to follow internal Xbox processes and use the possibility of anonymous feedback so that problems can be solved.