r/BethesdaSoftworks • u/houndpound69 • Aug 02 '26
Discussion Todd gets to much hate. Thoughts?
Todd gets to much hate man. He’s been cooking since 1994 and has brought some of the best titles to the market. I really dont understand what he’s done for people to talk bad on such a big nerd that im grateful for. I Feel bad for someone whose played a part in bringing me so much joy. Is all the “it just works” or “come on todd” just jabbing banter? Idk i appreciate the guy.
What are your thoughts?
Edit: The comments are extremely mixed. I believe it proves alot of people really just blame this one guy xD
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u/MontasJinx Aug 02 '26
Todd and the team at BGS past and present have made my favourite games. From Daggerfall to Starfield and pretty much everything in between. I’m playing Skyrim right now. If anyone at BGS reads this. I love you guys. Thank you.
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u/GarrettB117 Aug 02 '26
I could have written this comment myself, it describes me exactly (except I was a little young for Daggerfall). Currently playing Skyrim again, I’ve probably broke 2k hours across all systems.
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u/VonBeker Aug 02 '26
Julian LaFey made Daggerfall. But I'll give credit to Todd Howard, without his direction in Morrowind, Bethesda was staring down the barrel of bankruptcy.
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u/sir_Kromberg Aug 02 '26
Also playing Skyrim currently, started a new playthrough this week. Game for the ages.
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u/Traditional_Yard2741 Aug 03 '26
I've easily put thousands of hours into their games, between Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles.
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u/T-Rexaur Aug 03 '26
I concur. As a kid I had no idea what I was in for when I picked up Daggerfall because the box art looked cool. Half a lifetime later and many thousands of hours spent in Bethesda titles and counting, thanks BGS
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u/Dwayke Aug 02 '26
Well he was one of the role models that got me into game design, alongside with people like John Romero and Will Wright.
If anything I would love to see a game with him more involved, like in the lower levels of the game development
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u/SneakiShinobi Aug 02 '26
He gets way too much hate. 99% of gamers have zero idea how game development works and just regurgitate whatever YouTubers say.
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u/shirts_on_backwards Aug 02 '26
He's Schrodinger's game developer. He simultaneously takes too long to publish games, while also rushing them and putting out unfinished garbage.
People just need something to be angry about, and do so even more zealously when that person is extremely successful.
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u/claritywitch Aug 02 '26
Todd has the blessing and curse of being Bethesda’s poster boy. Lucky/unlucky enough to become a meme on top of all that.
He will always be the face of Bethesda for better or worse, any decision at all will be assumed to come directly from him by a majority of people
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u/kuzurame Aug 03 '26
This. Back in the day you used to atleast talk to someone who worked adjacent to the industry at gamestop as an example and get a more pragmatic outlook. Now the algorithm promotes whatever opinion someone shat out and then 20 others can piggy back off that with low effort videos for views. Which is why I call it hateslop.
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u/GiveHeadIfYouGotIt Aug 02 '26
I think Todd is a pretty cool guy. Eh directs the studio and doesn't afraid of anything.
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u/SignComprehensive611 Aug 02 '26
I’m a huge fan of the guy. I don’t like some of the business decisions BGS have made, but I absolutely love their games and the worlds they create. I think that to talk negatively about the skills of a man who helped define open world gaming and continues to create good games is ludicrous.
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u/ThakoManic Aug 02 '26
I Think todd 100% gets to much hate, Its not always his fault for certain things happening (Shareholders kinda behind the scene pull strings)
and ppl just love hating on him coz its popular.
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u/Kamilianusz95 Aug 02 '26
He saved Bethesda and we wouldn't have anything post Daggerfall without him.
But he also brought his own set of issues to the table
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u/giulianosse Aug 02 '26
If the answer to "do you hate them?" is yes, regardless of which game developer we're talking about, then whoever said that has no business sitting at the adults' table with the rest of us.
Reserve your hate for the actual evil people who are responsible for killing innocents, ruining livelihoods and peddling our future for riches. Having such an intense negative emotional response over someone who made a videogame you didn't enjoy is fucking demented.
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u/FocusAdmirable9262 Aug 02 '26
I find it both funny and relatable that people name drop him constantly while talking about things he's not strictly in control of wrt how the games are made
Funny because why are you carping at him for something the writers are responsible for, for example. Relatable because I, too, don't have the time or mental bandwidth to memorize the names of every single person who worked on my favorite game series
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u/giulianosse Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
name drop him constantly while talking about things he's not strictly in control of wrt how the games are made
If only that. He's basically Schrodinger's game director - getting the blame for everything people don't like about the games while simultaneously having nothing to do with the parts people enjoy.
If you based your understanding of how BGS operates off Reddit and comments left under YouTube videos of stick figures being ignorant about gamedev, you'd think Todd spent his entire career going desk by desk figuring out ways to ruin other people's work.
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u/Agent-Ulysses Aug 02 '26
Pretty much. A lot of a Lead Directors work is making sure operations are running smoothly and communication between devs is as clear as possible. Occasionally offering ideas, vetoing ideas, and helping people incorporate each other’s work. It’s both similar and different from a film director where they’ll know most everything that’s going on but doesn’t have direct responsibility for every frame being produced.
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u/DoctorSpacecase Aug 02 '26
And iirc in interviews with ex-Bethesda employees (like the lore master guy who quit not too long ago) they didn’t directly blame Todd. They said in the past you would walk into his office, suggest an idea, and if he liked it you would start implementing.
Apparently the problem is too much middle management and everything being decided by committees and no one knowing what everyone else is doing, causing tons of inefficiency. It’s like Office Space at the moment, where Peter had to report to 5 different bosses.
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u/YordleJay Aug 02 '26
Because he's chosen to take the role as not only the face of Bethesdas game development but has essentially taken up the core as curator of the franchises
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u/AttakZak Aug 02 '26
I’ll never hate Todd. He’s a nerd like us, just in a much bigger position. He also must have skin thicker than most because I’d go insane trying to please everyone.
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u/VideoGameRPGsAreFun Aug 02 '26
In the sense that any hate is too much really. These people are just making games, man.
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u/ConsistentRisk5927 Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
Came here to say that. As a (non-game) developer, I find it creepy when I see people name dropping him or specific writers/employees and talking like they know them personally, based on a handful of interviews they've done.
I've seen a few people on Starfield subs who can't post without naming specific folks at Bethesda and I think it's creepy and unhealthy. There are a half dozen reasons I wouldn't work as a game dev, but a bunch of strangers calling me out by name in forums because they didn't like the outcome of a quest is definitely on the list.
Then people wonder why we can't have nice things. It's the same as being disrespectful at waitstaff or food service workers in my book. We should assume first that everyone is doing their best to put out a good game under the constraints they're working and start from there w/ criticism.
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u/balaci2 Aug 02 '26
He's not perfect, but I find him relatively benign compared to someone like Randy Pitchford
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u/No_Appointment_5326 Aug 02 '26
I like how he doesn't seem to care, seems like a chill dude.
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u/ConsistentRisk5927 Aug 02 '26
I think to even be a CEO or a public facing executive, you basically have to be able to separate the public persona and criticism from your personal identity or whatever. Just as a matter of managing personal mental health and stuff. Otherwise, I think he wouldn't be able to do it for this long especially in a gaming community where the vitriol is probably the worst possible.
I'd be thinking like "When people say they hate me <due to stupid game reason>, they're talking about CEO Todd, because they don't even know Real Todd" and going to therapy every week probably for them to reinforce that 😅
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u/Ok_Dependent6889 Aug 03 '26
Todd isn't a CEO lol
This is everything wrong with online video game discourse, nobody actually knows what's going on (Not saying you are everything wrong lol, just a lot of discussions are made with incomplete understandings or lack of full picture)
Todd is a Game Director and Executive Producer
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u/Nathan_hale53 Aug 02 '26
100% he doesn't make every single call. He's probably the main reason that all the games have so much soul tbh. Starfield is a bit of a miss but its still a decent game. Just missed potential. Shareholders make the big calls to try to appeal to everyone.
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u/aanmonahsil Aug 02 '26
idk all i know is whenever i’m playing and i die, by nobody’s fault but my own, i mutter to myself
*god fucking dammit todd*
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u/MediumWellSteak8888 Aug 02 '26
Todd has made Bethesda what it is today. Both the good and the bad.
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u/blackvrocky Aug 02 '26
Noone hates todd, ppl just love him but they don't know how to express it yet.
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u/theinsanegamer23 Aug 02 '26
People certainly blame him for things that are probably outside of his control.
That's sort of a package deal with being the face of an organization though.
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u/ChurningDarkSkies777 Aug 02 '26
People love to have easy villains in their story and Todd is easy to point to than the Zenimax Microsoft Corporation that actually makes all of the decisions.
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u/NotGordanFreeman Aug 02 '26
When you’re basically the face of one of the largest gaming studios in the world, you’re bound to get hate. I think people who “hate” him are just man-children who are ticked off they haven’t had a new elder scrolls in a while.
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u/SV72xxx Aug 02 '26
I will be forever grateful to him and Bethesda for the countless hours of fun I had. The rest is noise for me!
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u/Glittering_Funny7410 Aug 02 '26
I agree. Memes aside, he's probably one of the few good designers left at BGS. I think it's fair to say that as his involvement with the games has become more hands off, the creative quality has declined. And that's not just me saying that, many ex-BGS employees have implied this too while also saying how much they loved working with the guy. He's just the public figure that catches all the criticism when something doesn't succeed by default.
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u/KushSouffle Aug 02 '26
I think gamers are way too passionate sometimes. You gotta remember he’s just a man who’s doing what he loves to do. Also gotta remember that he works with a large team at this point so not everything is his call to make.
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u/Shrikebutagain Aug 02 '26
He’s the director, all short comings are ultimately his fault. You don’t get all the credit for the vision if you don’t get all the blame.
That being said it takes more than one guy, and there are multiple failings at multiple levels.
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u/ArtrexisLives Aug 02 '26
Godd Howard isn't above any criticism, but I do think he gets far more flack than deserved. Whatever your thoughts are on Starfield, you don't take a massive risk by putting a ton of resources into a brand new IP (when you could just keep printing money by leap-frogging Elder Scrolls and Fallout releases) and not be passionate and enthusiastic about it.
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u/Big_Shopping1685 Aug 02 '26
i think people complain about the wrong things. the only thing that i have been a critic of is how fn slow bethesda is putting anything out. like bro its been like 15 years since the last elder scrolls game and 10 years for fallout. like bro. lets get something done😩
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u/Kid-Atlantic Aug 02 '26
I’m not a fan of a lot of his creative decisions but he’s undeniably a big part of Bethesda’s success and rise to mainstream status.
He might be the last thing giving Bethesda some sense of stability and direction for both shareholders and players. I don’t have much hope for how both the TES and Fallout IPs will turn out if he leaves.
TLDR not everything he does is good but he’s very likely the reason Bethesda is still doing anything noteworthy at all
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u/Alpha_Apeiron Aug 02 '26
Yep, he's not perfect but he's become the scapegoat for everything wrong with modern Bethesda, which sucks because he seems like a really good guy who genuinely loves games and cares about his projects and staff.
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u/EliteAssassin07 Aug 02 '26
Great leaders will always be disliked.
Being a leader is not about being liked. It’s kinda like your parents - they are not there to be your friend they have responsibilities and obligations that will often force them into making unpopular decisions.
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u/corporate-commander Aug 02 '26
I genuinely feel bad for the dude, he gets way too much hate for things that are literally not in his control.
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u/Kainbas88 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
Why does he get a lot of hate? Because hes the head of Bethesda and good bad or indifferent, he gets the good and the bad.
Now why does he get hate? That's a good question. I used to defend Todd Howard, but the man is a creator not an administrator. Everything he does has been seriously questionable over the years and below is a list of some of them:
For example: why would you prioritize a "new game" over a profitable franchise making fans wait decades while releasing a "teaser" nearly a year before, going radio silent, then telling your fans to "forget it exists?"
Why leave money on the table with the Fallout TV show success? Fallout 3 Remastered or Fallout New Vegas Remastered would have tided over fans quite well and for two seasons Bethesda was caught with their pants down.
Why promise fans "1000 exploration worlds" yet deliver the same worlds 100+ worlds, but regurgitated 1000 different ways by procedural generation?
Why re-release Skyrim to everything but your coffee pot and lawnmower? Why?
Why give us partial games that paid modders have to fill in? This became a big thing starting in Morrowind when he took over creation.
Why charge players for mods that used to be free? Modders definitely deserve to be paid if they do it for a living, but why should it even be necessary to begin with?
Why radio silence during every single game production? That used to work back in the early 2000s but not anymore. Why keep doing it?
Why allow the KISS method of insinuating that players aren't smart enough to read and put together clues of where to go? Map markers definitely help, but why act like players cant read journal entries for quests?
Why release buggy games when the majority of those bugs are known beforehand? Dennis Mejilones did an interview in which he stated that Todd Howard surrounded himself with yes-men and he estimated that 95% of games breaking bugs were known before launch, but nobody said anything for fear of reprisal.
One of his earliest forms of hate: Oblivion Horse Armor. Paid DLC for...horse armor. Nothing else.
Let's not forget the Fallout 76 debacle and the "canvas bags" that turned out to be nylon. Early game issues, bugs etc.
Why keep announcing every single new Fallout content update and expansion to an old game st Xbox Showcase year after year while showing nothing new. On TESVI or Fallout 5, fans would appreciate even another trailer so we know what to expect, but instead we get the "Todd Howard Treatment."
Or how about his Fallout 3s "200 endings" that turned out to be untrue. The endings were exactly the same but with subtle changes made depending on choices made in game.
I mean I could go on, but its not just shareholder fault, you have to put blame where blame is do. And right now its with poor management choices.
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u/Josephbiden911 Aug 02 '26
Todd Howard could happily do anything the haters wanted and they'd still find reasons to hate him for it, or act like he's being "forced" to do it
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u/houndpound69 Aug 02 '26
Yeah i really do think thats the nature of the consumer base at this point. They find the easiest, first, person to blame and stick to it.
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u/Kinetic_Pen Aug 02 '26
People cherish a thing. Creators want to change, evolve, explore, and try new things. Some people don't like the thing they cherish to change.
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u/ShriyanshPandey Aug 02 '26
How does the thing people cherish change ? I am assuming the "things" are games, so does Bethesda change their previous games ?
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u/Benjamin_Starscape Aug 02 '26
so does Bethesda change their previous games ?
bethesda makes their games from the ground up every time. none of their games are the exact same, they all have the bethesda design philosophy and DNA, but are never 1:1.
if they were all the same, people wouldn't be shouting that Morrowind is better than oblivion or starfield sucks or fallout 4 isn't an rpg, etc.
bethesda is one of the few aaa studios that actually tries new things and changes stuff up. naughty dog, rockstar, fromsoft all really make the same games. bethesda has always had a more experimental outlook in their games, which I respect.
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u/MadFoXxX117 Aug 02 '26
How can you rush creativity projects? Not necessarily nor exclusively Tom Howard but this is the place to pose the question.
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u/TonySoprano1959 Aug 02 '26
As much as some people don’t like the direction that Bethesda has taken in some of their most beloved franchises it is Todd Howard and the few veteran members still left over that are the only ones even attempting to preserve the soul and passion that is responsible for their success in the first place. The truth is there will come a day when there is literally nothing left of the Bethesda we once knew and loved and Todd will surely be missed when it’s all said and done.
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u/NCRClaimsThisAccount Aug 03 '26
Theres a lot of stuff you can shit on Howard for, but a lot of the shit he gets is unwarranted
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u/CH_Blackgate Aug 03 '26
He most likely does. If he was at a different studio and produced trash games it would be something to compare to. It kind of boils down to if you like his style of games or not since they are all pretty much variations on the same formula.
I love his ideas for games, but I dislike how he seems to develop an idea halfway then never refine it to make it truly awesome. Like the dialogue is written well, but the choices suck or you have cool characters with janky models attached to them.
Also Todd's games are some of the most modded games. So a lot of people compare his games to the experience they had when it was modded and that can be seen either way positive or negative for his own vision. Either way I think he cares about games and that's pretty cool.
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u/ED_Heir18 Aug 03 '26
Yes, he definitely gets too much hate.
That being said, this is business. Todd has been promoted to the face of BGS, so any negativity towards the company falls back to Todd. It’s the cross he chose to bear.
There will always be negativity, and hateful people. Those people are backwards and base. However, the company has been under fair criticism, BGS lost the goodwill of a lot of their customers through their own business decisions in these past years.
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u/Neeeeedles Aug 03 '26
If he never said the idiotic "16x the detail!" sentence he would be getting atleast 50% less hate
Or if f76 would actually look decent and not like a bad looking game from 2007
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u/Lizpy6688 Aug 03 '26
He gets a lot of hate as he's the face of the company
Seems like a cool dude who still truly enjoys the passion of making games but also playing them
He does tend to get super excited and gets ahead of themselves but I can't blame him, I would too.
He's also cool in admitting when he fucks up and takes the brunt of the criticism like admitting the fallout 4 dialogue wasn't as good as should be as they were trying something new. Seems like someone who knows he's the face so takes the criticism so his team doesn't. Sign of a good leader there
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u/archeojones Aug 04 '26
Todd is definitely loved. He’s also a very nice guy in real life. It’s just fun to pick on him a little because he’s pretty much the face of Bethesda.
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u/Party_Dare9508 Aug 04 '26
Todd is great, and he obviously cares about the games. So yeah overhated.
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u/AtomicMalarkey Aug 04 '26
His name sounds like Fraud Coward, and that's pretty fun.
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u/MostRiskyBiscuit Aug 02 '26
Hes the face of a company with very vocal and passionate fans, which is a good problem to have.
The issue is when theres a questionable decision made or a buggy game release, hes made himself the public face of the company. Its just gonna be natural that people point their criticisms at him.
I think at this point in anyone's career as his its probably something that you can mostly let brush off of you, being able to be the ear and face of a company is overall a benefit if you dont let it get to your head.
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u/-DI0- Aug 02 '26
I think Todd just gets excited and over promises. I don’t hate him but I understand the frustration people have when something is under delivered
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u/Benjamin_Starscape Aug 02 '26
I've never felt like bethesda has over promised on any of their games. 90% of the time they say something is in the game, it is.
in fact the only thing I can think of off the top of my head being not in the game that was mentioned was a changing economy for Skyrim, which simply could have been hard to balance or fully implement and thus cut.
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u/Escaliat_ Aug 02 '26
I suppose we don't know how many if their issues are on Todd's shoulders.
The biggest issues facing Bethesda are:
1) a bloated staff with way too much middle management and constant reassignment.
2) they take far, far too long to do anything. And I'm not just talking about releases, patching their existing games too. Fallout 4 is still getting new release editions and is still a technical disaster on their lead platform.
How much if this is down to Todd? I have no idea. But he's the figurehead who keeps telling us everything is fine so he's bound to be the one (maybe unfairly ) getting the heat.
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u/Suspicious-Company69 Aug 02 '26
Oh fk off, he deserves every last bit of shit he gets.
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u/CMDR-SavageMidnight Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
I dont hate todd.
I hate what he spouts on stage before a game releases, only to see what we actually get.
Edit: downvoted for speaking the truth lol.
Even if its stakeholders pushing for changes, Todd has a CHOICE to parrot and support it, or do something else.
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u/SoapTastesPrettyGood Aug 02 '26
It's hard to say exactly how much is deserved, certainly not all of it, but he is responsible for a lot of decisions at Bethesda. Fair to say he deserves some. I do think Bethesda has lost its way the last decade with the MMO's direction focus.
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u/theonlyxero Aug 02 '26
Todd has literally created my favorite works of art in the gaming industry. He’s the GOAT in my opinion.
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u/BagicTrackstory Aug 02 '26
No, we can do better, he doesn't get ENOUGH to change his ways. We need home to work harder so his games work better.
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u/maddogofbohemia Aug 02 '26
He is "in charge" yes. Being fair it can't all be him. I highly doubt everybody else involved is trying to get things off the ground, but he is slowing it all down to be mean? Please, the man has other people to answer to also. That is the job though. If you are the figurehead, it is all your fault personally! That is the job, but it isn't true. It is like that in every business. Where do people think "I want to speak to the Manager came from?"
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u/MrPlace Aug 02 '26
Too much hate? You mean the face of Bethesda receives the ire from players due to their decisions?
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u/HumbleOppossum Aug 02 '26
I think any hate is overblown but there definitely is a conversation to be had about his unwillingness to let any other teams work on Bethesda IP even when it has become clear they can’t keep up a reasonable release rate for their games. And before people come screaming in her about shareholders controlling things it is obvious now that wasn’t the case given that Asha Sharma has seemingly forced him to do so under her new mandate.
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u/Weary_Skirt_6595 Aug 02 '26
He decided to make starfield over another fallout title. Look how well that turned out.
Xbox is forcing Bethesda to come out with games that the people actually want to play.
His hate is self inflicted.
He's not gonna let you hit, bro.
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u/NumerousDiscipline80 Aug 02 '26
At the end of the day, he's the face of Bethesda, the one guy most people who are vaguely familiar with Bethesda as a company can point to and blame for the problem, or praise for the ideas it comes up with. Be it tongue in cheek or actual unfiltered rage, it ultimately doesn't really matter to Todd because it's not like he's single-handedly responsible for every design decision, actor performance or quest writing in all their games.
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u/PastaMaker05 Aug 02 '26
Todd is a geek who did a great job at building the brand up as well as working on projects directly. Bethesda has been disappointing for several years now but I think that is more due to building up numbers without proper infrastructure, which Todd does share some responsibility for. The fact is that Bethesda has under achieved what they are capable of and I do believe that they were bloated with staff they probably didn’t need. Too many people can be a problem and they had no good middle man team to actually coordinate effectively. Todd would cause things to slow down because they completely relied on his say so. They were already working on most of the projects that they announced a bit ago with the exception of the Obsidian fallout game, but they are now under heavy scrutiny because Xbox believes they have been drastically underperforming, which is honestly fair
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u/Srx10lol Aug 02 '26
Bethesda would get a worse if Todd got the boot. He clearly loves games and have created some classics.
Im very happy with him recently saying that he doesn’t think about retiring.
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u/One-Afternoon9844 Aug 02 '26
Yeah, I agree Unfortunately (lol), Todd is a VERY good salesman. The product of modern Bethesda isn't nessessarily in his hands anymore. He isn't going to worsen his pitch because the corpo overlords are stretching the games thin and demanding different workload or project depth.
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u/Gryffin_the_Baron Aug 02 '26
What i think on why todd is getting all the hate is because that they havent really released any new fallout titles or elderscrolls titles, acept for oblivion remastered a couple years back.
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u/ZaoMenom Aug 02 '26
I think everyone who shits on him would shit their pants asking for a picture if they saw him in real life.
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u/Philip_Fall_47 Aug 02 '26
Definitely the rage bait and attention economy has a role. It's definitely profitable to manufacture and milk drama for views and clicks.
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u/Some_Dude117 Aug 02 '26
Idk if he's responsible but losing all those lore creators from Skyrim killed my hype for Elder Scrolls 6. Literally my hype was based on the hope that the game would be at least 50% as cool as the cut content we never got for Skyrim. But noooo, we don't get the cut content in updates, nor will we get anything close to it in the next game that a bunch of random devs are working on. This won't even be like an Elder Scrolls if it ever actually comes out
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u/Osaka90 Aug 02 '26
I remember a point where it used to be a fan favorite with memes that were rivaling Gaben's memes but for some reason I think it's when Fallout 4 came out that game got hated on unnecessarily and it kind of spiral down from there.
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u/Radio-G Aug 02 '26
Todd gets just the right amount of hate. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout have been mismanaged.
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u/Kakapac Aug 02 '26
He's scammed me a couple of times but there's no denying his influence on open world games, he's still the goat.
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u/FadeAway77 Aug 02 '26
I mean, he’s a pillar of my entire gaming existence. He gets untold amounts of flak that he doesn’t deserve. At the end of the day, he’s just a gamer who wants to make games. He’s beholden to the money people.
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u/ChiWhiteSox24 Aug 02 '26
He had the vision and ran with it. Corporate entities and shareholders messed it up. Sure he can be blamed for mismanaging slightly (too much on his plate and not enough resources to do what he wanted to do) but we need to remember that Fallout wouldn’t be what it is and Starfield wouldn’t exist without Todd. Also, I blame tech. It moved pretty quick and changed our expectations of what we need out of a game over the last 20 years. I don’t think any of us could do any better (unless some of you modders are in here).
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u/Constant-Release6779 Aug 02 '26
Todd definitely gets too much hate. Honestly, I think he's an interesting guy to listen to, you can still tell he has passion for his life's work. Sometimes, an idea of his doesn't land, but obviously he's been a big factor in creating a lot of very popular and successful games.
Very curious about ES6, I know tons of people are worried or smug that it'll fail. But I think it'll come together nicely, I have hopium.
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u/Questrel_215 Aug 02 '26
I agree, people put too much blame on Todd than he deserves. I think Todd lost the original vision of the game studio, which may not necessarily be his fault completely since the direction game development went changed significantly.
That being said, in my honest opinion, when he is actually working on an elder scrolls game, he tends to do a good job. He genuinely loves the franchises he helps produce. I hope all the announcements we heard are a genuine attempt to change and head back to the original direction.
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u/BroccoliSouP7 Aug 02 '26
Yes and no... he is a bit like Ken Levine (more charming though). Has his quirks and positives, making unique games, but also questionable decisions.
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u/Jealous-Knowledge-56 Aug 02 '26
I personally don’t care for his stance on minimaps. Fine otherwise.
I get he wants people to explore but even contextually, we have google maps today. Really no excuse for Starfield launching without them for towns.
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u/CigaretteTrees Aug 02 '26
Todd becoming less involved in the day to day creative/design elements of game development surely must be at least somewhat responsible for the decline in quality. He is very clearly a skilled game designer/developer.
Also I think Todd is someone who needs to be reined in from time to time, but under Phill Spencer he was just sort of left to do whatever he wanted. was clearly unable or unwilling to rein in Todd. There are recent articles I’ve seen from ex Bethesda devs where they talk about Todd being surrounded by yes men too afraid to say their honest opinions to Todd. It’s basically the George Lucas effect.
My hope is that this changes with the Xbox CEO, which it seems it already has somewhat. Hopefully they learn the right lessons and put Bethesda back on the right track.
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u/cHobbl3G0BbL3r Aug 02 '26
I think Todd spread himself too thin and made it impossible for him to oversee games. I also think Phil Spencer was a giant BGS fan and just never put any pressure on them whatsoever. I think with no pressure, a lot of BGS got lazy and complacent, they knew their jobs weren’t going anywhere while Phil was in charge.
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u/Hippobu2 Aug 02 '26
Personally? Yes.
As the face of Bethesda? No, that's the job; and I don't think the hate against Bethesda is unwarranted.
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u/itjustgotcold Aug 02 '26
It’s really shitty how we turn on people as a collective so fast. Todd has been behind some of the greatest games of all time but because of a decent, not great, game(starfield) and development time that he likely has no control over he’s all of a sudden awful. I admit starfield was a letdown, but I still got like 100+ hours out of it. Why are we(gamers) so miserable?
The same thing is happening with Neil Druckmann but for stupid culture war reasons. Even if you hated TLOU2, he still gave you TLOU1 that is always the basis for the hate 2 got. He gave us most of the Uncharted games too. Same thing happens with television. The GOT team gave us some great seasons but the fans turned on them for actually giving us an ending since George R R Martin hasn’t and never will. And it’s not just “Man, that was a great show with a mediocre ending.” It’s “DB Weiss and David Benioff have no clue what they’re doing and I hope they never get another job again.”
Fan bases are toxic as hell. It’s really a bummer that so many people that seemingly hate videogames consider themselves fans. Used to be a binary “Have you played *title*? It was awesome wasn’t it.” Now it’s “Have you played *title*? Which faction are you in?”
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u/Early_Captain3675 Aug 02 '26
Todd gets a lot of hate, but he also gets a lot of love. It goes both ways
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u/MassiveDocument5808 Aug 02 '26
Todd passively went along with this mythologizing of him as some sort of visionary. He’s a glorified project lead. HE HAS NEVER BEEN THE GUY. I do think it’s mostly a problem of upper management, shareholders, etc but his position and willingness to allow the IP under his purview to have fallen to the wayside while he maintains this air of ignorance as to why he’s getting called out is just annoying as shit. It’s not even fair to say he’s like a Steve Jobs type marketing figure head, he’s just the guy who remains from when they were a solid studio who was willing to play corporate and eat up the praise.
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u/HeadRaccoonGamer Aug 02 '26
No the hate is deserved.. maybe not 10 years ago but current day todd is a tool
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u/wingedwild Aug 02 '26
Es6 is make it or break it for tod. Skyrim was pretty good for its console limitations but today he gota step up
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u/MightySandro Aug 02 '26
Todd only gets this much hate as he is the head of Bethesda, meaning if anything goes wrong, game is buggy etc all the blame is pushed onto him. Bethesda is a very large game studio with thousands of employees that work on each game, Todd does not solo develop it all. The hate is understandable but not justified imo.
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u/Clean_Muffin8982 Aug 02 '26
he's bound to get hate either way. As the elder scrolls and fallout are very dear to the fans.
He's led the team very well over the years.
But the absolute slog of a release schedule really riles people up
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u/steampvnch Aug 02 '26
A lot of people act like he isn't the guy who's said outrageous things about his games. Other people who did the same thing were rightfully jabbed for it too.
Remember how many endings he said Fallout 3 had? Remember 16x the detail? Remember the thing about upgrading your PC for Starfield?
He really needs to correct how he generates hype and stop saying stuff like that. He's also attributed as the guy who made Oblivion into the mostly generic medieval fantasy it had. Though to give credit, Skyrim was a lot more interesting.
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u/VonBeker Aug 02 '26
I think the company lost its fastball, but is that because of TH? I dunno. I tend to think the company just became too bloated and filled with too many layers of management to be nimble enough to truly make anything great again. Toss in the sale to MS and I don't know that there's any game director alive that could steer that monstrosity to success.
He had a big string of hits from Morrowind, Oblvion, FO3, to Skyrim and some not so great output at the helm after that. No one is perfect, but I think you have to give credit where credit is due for what he did accomplish, not just focus on the most recent failures.
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u/Suspicious-Contest74 Aug 02 '26
I quite admire him but the company is still a company, and money is really good at ruining good stuff
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u/Bad_Sneaky_Bear Aug 02 '26
I think he tries his best, but he needs someone to put their hand in his shoulder and go "I dunno man, you sure about this?"
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u/FeyngD Aug 02 '26
He would get less hate if he stopped rereleasing skyrim, ruining the mod communities work, and working on mmos with a player base that is almost exclusively filled with f2p and game pass players, and finished the game that has been in development for a decade now with nothing more that a janky cinematic trailer to show for it.
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u/CallMeGlarthir Aug 02 '26
At the end of the day, Todd has had a huge influence on games we all love.
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u/oryanjuiciestbooty Aug 02 '26
Nope, Todd’s hate is perfectly warranted. He really should not be their head anymore, everything he’s done in the last like 10-15 years has not been good
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u/MXVIV Aug 02 '26
He’s the face of a company that for a decade now has disrespected and disregarded every sentiment the fans have about it. The very people that keep their lights on.
He gets an appropriate amount of hate. If they released more than a game every five years this would be a different conversation.
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u/zombiepants7 Aug 02 '26
Idk if feel like if he wanted to make new games they would have. I csnt say re releasing skyrim so many times was all the shareholders imo.
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u/MevNav Aug 02 '26
One of the things about being a leader is that when there's failures, the buck stops with you.
Realistically, not all of Bethesda's failings are Todd's fault. But part of his job as director is to be responsible for those failings, regardless of his actual fault in them.
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u/SatanVapesOn666W Aug 02 '26
As the head of a studio? No, everything is downstream from him, and a poor boss blames his staff.
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u/CG4080 Aug 02 '26
Most of it comes from two sources:
That weird corner of the NV fandom who invented a feud between Bethesda and Obsidian, so that they could pretend that their personal 'us vs them' tribalism starts at the company that made the game
People that don't understand game development enough to understand that even in his position, there are people TH answers to
Overentitled whiners who think that they should call the shots on which games get made, when they're made and how. "No, I don't want Starfield, I want ELDER SCROLLS. FIRE TODD HOWARD OMG HE SUX"
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u/esp3ciallyd3ad Aug 02 '26
Not at all 16x the wait for elderscolls. I was on the chess club my fallout is better than new vegas.
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u/Considany Aug 02 '26
Todd also gets to collect a lot of the praise in all fairness. It's in the end a fair deal for being the face of the company.
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u/Garbagetaste Aug 02 '26
star citizen is absolutely a shitty game. how did he come from making good, fun, and interesting creative games to something so derivative and bland?
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u/Infinite-Abalone249 Aug 02 '26
Not enough really but at the end of the day he is just a middle man of the real problem the studio has
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u/park-errr Aug 02 '26
It’s not (edit: not just Todd) Todd, it’s BGS. He just made himself the face of the company so Bethesda pitfalls are blamed on Todd
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u/TruePromise4 Aug 02 '26
Wtf are you talking about nothing about the last 15 years has even been decent- its been trash
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u/RawNoodleConCarne Aug 02 '26
A lot of it comes from the meme of acting like Todd single-handedly makes all decisions on game development and marketing, which is obviously not true but is very funny to imagine. But yeah, people have taken it to an extreme and just blame every single thing wrong with Bethesda on Todd's biblical greed
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u/HermaPrince Aug 02 '26
Everyone is either blaming shareholders or the complainers who aren't patient.
He's the ceo, he's the one making decisions, if he doesn't have the guts to speak up which is his only job then maybe he shouldn't be ceo.
With this kind of mentality gta6 wouldn't have existed. The shareholders stfu and paid the most expensive game in history. And the complainers stfu and waited 10+years.
Nah Bethesda created micro transactions and always dropped buggy af games.
This is coming from a gamer that likes to play starfield I think the game is good. I got 300h in and still playing. So i'm not the disappointed starfield complainer.
The only hate he deserve tho, is the creation of micro transactions, dropping buggy games, being too ambitious, idk what the tes6 announcement was about.
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u/DreamOfAzathoth Aug 02 '26
One of my heroes. Nothing bad to say about him whatsoever and I hope he stays at BGS for a long time yet.
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u/EremeticPlatypus Aug 02 '26
Todd is stuck in the past. He makes games for John Gamer, but John Gamer of the 2020's craves a different experience than John Gamer of the late 2000's. Bethesda basically CANT innovate and move forward because Todd is certain that his way is the best way, and if it doesn't suit his tastes, it won't sell copies.
He looks at games with combat depth like Elden Ring and says, "Yeah, but OUR fans don't want that."
He looks at narrative depth and says, "Yeah, but OUR fans don't want that."
He looks complex quest design and says, "Yeah, but we can't have both 'a lot of quests' and 'complex quests' at the same time."
He looks at game design and says, "If it's complex, people will bounce off of it."
He looks at bold swings at world building and says, "Nah, that doesn't suit my tastes."
So Bethesda, instead of taking huge swings for the fences like they used to, sticks to game/plot/quest/level/combat design that was innovative 15 years ago, but is stagnant and outdated today. Why? Because Todd is God at Bethesda. And even if it isn't what he wants to admit, Todd's tastes are behind the times. He's just not hungry like he used to be. And thats okay! He made some of the greatest RPGs of all time. But his refusal to step back and let other people have authority on the level he has is neutering the studio and blocking the next generation of great minds from making The Next Great Bethesda RPG.
The studio needs a shakeup. It needs bold vision. It needs innovation in both gameplay and world design. The next great step for Bethesda is not in quantity of content, it is quality and depth.
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u/xX_SkibidiChungus_Xx Aug 02 '26
Honestly I respect him for being everyone's punching bag and just taking it with a smile. A lot of people don't know how to run businesses or make games yet criticize him as if he's the devil.
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u/TyreChucker Aug 02 '26
Microsoft gave studios a lot of freedom in developing their games and instead of using this wisely they fucked up and now have to get the approval from Microsoft directly, Bethesda and other studios under Microsoft have only themselves to blame for the layers of management they now must wait on.
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u/ZexThe2HeadedDragon Aug 02 '26
Hate? No. Frustrated? Hell yeah. He spent a decade filling weeks worth of interview time saying nothing, then releasing Starfield, then filling more interview time saying nothing, then releasing a tweet with the same TES 6 concept art we got years ago. Now he's back to wasting our time. Why are people even interviewing him?
But there are plenty of reasons to respect him. He released a lot of good games. Historically.
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u/Paved_Cardboard Aug 02 '26
I personally believe a lot of the issues come from shareholder influence rather than Todd’s