Bethesda Game Studios facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Bethesda Game Studios

Type	Division
Industry	Video games
Founded	2001; 24 years ago (2001)
Headquarters	Rockville, Maryland , US
Key people	Angela Browder (studio director) Ashley Cheng (managing director) Todd Howard (executive producer)
Products	The Elder Scrolls series (2002–present) Fallout series (2008–present) Starfield (2023)
Number of employees	>450 (2023)
Parent	Bethesda Softworks

Bethesda Game Studios is an American video game developer. It is a part of ZeniMax Media and is located in Rockville, Maryland. This studio is famous for creating exciting action role-playing games.

Their most well-known game series include The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield. Bethesda Game Studios started in 2001. It was created as the game-making part of Bethesda Softworks. Todd Howard is a main leader, called the executive producer. He works with Ashley Cheng, the managing director, and Angela Browder, the studio director. In November 2023, over 450 people worked at Bethesda Game Studios.

How Bethesda Game Studios Started

Bethesda Game Studios began in 2001. Before this, Bethesda Softworks made and published games. Then, it became a part of a bigger company called ZeniMax Media. The head of ZeniMax, Robert A. Altman, wanted to make the game development team bigger.

So, Bethesda Game Studios was formed. It separated from Bethesda Softworks' publishing side. The new studio started with about 40 people.

Becoming a Top Game Developer

By 2008, Bethesda Game Studios was seen as one of the best game makers. This was thanks to their popular fantasy world, The Elder Scrolls. Their game Fallout 3 also received great reviews.

Bethesda found a special way to make games. They spent years creating huge, open-world, single-player role-playing games. This type of game was not very common then. But Bethesda made them very successful. They brought a game style once popular mainly on computers to many different game systems.

Growing with New Studios

In December 2015, Bethesda Game Studios opened a new office. This satellite studio was in Montreal, Canada. Yves Lachance, who used to lead another game company, became its head.

In 2018, two more studios joined Bethesda Game Studios. BattleCry Studios became Bethesda Game Studios Austin in March. Escalation Studios became Bethesda Game Studios Dallas in August. Both were already owned by ZeniMax. Later, in March 2021, Microsoft bought ZeniMax.

Games Made by Bethesda Game Studios

Bethesda Game Studios mostly creates role-playing video games. Their main series are The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. These games are made for consoles and personal computers. Most of their games have been very popular and successful.

In 2015, the studio started making games for phones. They released Fallout Shelter, based on the Fallout series. By mid-2016, 50 million people were playing it. In 2017, they announced another mobile game. This game was later revealed as The Elder Scrolls: Blades in 2018.

In 2016, Todd Howard said that The Elder Scrolls VI was being made. But he noted it would be a long time before it came out. Two other big projects were planned to release first. On May 30, 2018, Fallout 76 was announced.

At the E3 2018 game event, the other project was shown. It was Starfield, a brand new game world for the company in 25 years. Starfield was released on September 6, 2023. It came out only for PC and Xbox Series X/S. In June 2022, Howard confirmed that Fallout 5 would start development after The Elder Scrolls VI is finished.

Awards and Recognition

Bethesda Game Studios has won several awards for its work:

• In 2008, Gamasutra named them one of the Top Five Developers.
• In 2011, they won Studio of the Year at the Spike Video Game Awards.
• In 2015, they were nominated for Developer of the Year at The Game Awards.

See also

In Spanish: Bethesda Game Studios para niños