Bureaucracy & Broken Promises: Bethesda's Former Loremaster Explains His Departure
Kurt Kuhlmann spoke about Bethesda biggering from a close-knit group of enthusiasts into a gigantic corporate machine.
Over two years after his departure, Kurt Kuhlmann – Bethesda's former Writer, Designer, Programmer, and Loremaster, whose exit was described by Michael Kirkbride himself as a massive blow to the upcoming The Elder Scrolls 6 – has finally revealed the reasons behind his decision to leave the studio in September 2023, the same month Starfield was shipped.
Bethesda
Speaking to PC Gamer, Kuhlmann stated his departure boils down to two reasons – the first being the off-the-scale amount of bureaucracy that built up at Bethesda over the years.
Having been with the studio for nearly its entire existence and having worked on everything from The Terminator: Skynet and Daggerfall to Starfield, the longtime loremaster watched Bethesda grow from a small group of enthusiasts into a massive corporate machine, even before Microsoft acquired parent company ZeniMax in 2021. That shift naturally brought with it a familiar industry problem – the need for countless approvals, signatures, and JIRA tickets for even the smallest decisions – something that didn't sit right with Kuhlmann.
As if that wasn't enough, the ever-increasing bureaucratization also meant that lead developers and designers were increasingly burdened with managerial duties at the expense of creative work. While the former loremaster stressed this isn't necessarily a bad thing, he mentioned that by the time Starfield entered development, "it had gotten to a scale beyond where I was really enjoying working in that environment."
"The expectation was… your job can't be also making content if you're actually managing that scope of the project," he said. "I didn't want to work that way, because I like making games and being hands-on."
The second reason turned out to be much more personal – Todd Howard promising Kuhlmann a lead design role on TES 6, which was supposed to be the studio's next game after 2015's Fallout 4, and breaking said promise over a decade later.
"Of course, after Fallout 4 we didn't go to TES6, we made Fallout 76, and then even then we didn't make TES6, we made Starfield, which became this extremely long project compared to other ones. So from my point of view, I've been waiting like 11 years to be the lead on TES 6," the ex-developer commented.
At some point, during what Kuhlmann described as a "tough conversation" with Bethesda's executive, Howard told him he would not be the lead and was instead offered "an important role in the project," something the loremaster evidently saw as a downgrade from what he had been promised initially.
While it would only be natural for one to view this as a negative experience, Kuhlmann said that, in hindsight, Bethesda made the right call, as he most likely wouldn't have enjoyed the position anyway due to "the role of lead on TES 6 [being] very different from the role of lead on Skyrim."
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