Pete Hines says he left Bethesda because he didn't want to watch it being 'damaged' and 'abused'

For an awful lot of years, Pete Hines was the face of Bethesda Softworks: For game journalists first, as the company's marketing and PR guy, and later the public at large, when Bethesda started holding its own standalone showcases at E3. In terms of public awareness, he was pretty much the number-two guy behind Todd Howard; he was at the company for nearly a quarter-century, and made enough of an impact that when he left, it was a pretty big deal.

A few years down the road from his departure, Hines sat down for an interview with Firezide Chat Gaming, covering a range of topics from his early days at Bethesda—his first credits at the studio, listed on Mobygames, include writing the manuals for Sea Dogs, PBA Tour Bowling 2001, IHRA Drag Racing 2, and a little something called Morrowind—to what he's been doing with himself with all the free time he now has on his hands.

Hines also shared some thoughts on his final months at Bethesda, and what prompted him to leave—something he says he didn't particularly want to do—and while he doesn't speak the name Microsoft, it's not a difficult connection to make.

"I was staying there because this place still needs me," Hines said of his decision to leave. "I just hit a point of yes, it needs me, and I am powerless to do what I think needs to be done to run this place properly, to protect these people, to maintain what we worked so hard to create, which is an incredibly efficient, well run videogame developer and publisher.

"And when I was unable to do what I thought my job should involve in continuing to have that place be, you know, if not the most efficient publisher in the game industry, it was way the fuck up there. And when I couldn't protect it, and I saw how it was getting damaged and broken apart and frankly mistreated, abused, whatever word you want to use, I said I am not going to sit here and watch this happen right in front of me."

Microsoft acquired Bethesda in 2020 in what was at the time of the biggest-blockbuster game acquisitions of all time. (It still is, really, except that it's dwarfed in the public consciousness by Microsoft's subsequent buyout of Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.) At the time Hines described the pairing as a "perfect fit" in Bethesda's announcement of the deal, but just three years later, shortly after the release of Starfield, he'd retired—and just days after that, Microsoft changed its Xbox studio structure to bring Bethesda and other ZeniMax subsidiaries more directly under Microsoft's control.

Hines cited the release of Starfield as the culminating point of his career in his 2023 retirement message, but it turns out he had to wait longer than he expected for it. "I was waiting until after Starfield," Hines said. "I knew I was leaving the year before. Every time Todd delayed Starfield, I thought, fuck, I'm here another eight months."

He bears Howard no ill will, and is fact very clear throughout the interview that he holds his longtime Bethesda partner in the highest esteem—and credits him for making his final stretch at the studio tolerable. "Todd was the only one who knew [about Hines leaving]," he said. "It's another reason I love that man. He showed up for me when I was just at my wit's end and got me through that, and got me out of there in a way that I still retained my sanity."

That's far from the only time Hines expressed genuine affection for Howard in the interview: He also said that despite Bethesda's games sometimes being janky or buggy, Howard and the studio as a whole deserve respect for leaning into a level of game complexity "everybody else runs away from."