Bethesda Softworks facts for kids
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | June 28, 1986 in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
| Founder | Christopher Weaver |
| Headquarters |
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U.S.
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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| Products | List of Bethesda Softworks video games |
| Parent |
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| Divisions | Bethesda Game Studios |
Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American company that publishes (releases) video games. It is based in Rockville, Maryland.
Christopher Weaver started the company in 1986. At first, it was part of another company called Media Technology Limited. In 1999, it became a part of ZeniMax Media. For its first 15 years, Bethesda Softworks made its own games and released them itself.
In 2001, Bethesda created a separate team called Bethesda Game Studios to focus only on making games. This allowed Bethesda Softworks to focus on publishing games made by other teams. In March 2021, Microsoft bought ZeniMax Media, which owns Bethesda. Bethesda Softworks still publishes games for the different game studios under ZeniMax Media.
Contents
History
How it Started (1980s)
Before starting Bethesda Softworks, Christopher Weaver worked with technology and communications. He helped design fast internet systems for cable companies. He also worked for the U.S. government, helping to create laws about phones, TV, and cable.
Weaver also started a company called VideoMagic Laboratories. They tried to make new entertainment systems, but they didn't do very well. Later, in 1981, Weaver started Media Technology Associates. This company offered advice on engineering and media.
Weaver and his friend Ed Fletcher started experimenting with a new computer called the Amiga. Fletcher loved American football and suggested they make a football video game. They worked on the game, called Gridiron!, for about nine months. They wanted it to be very realistic, using physics to make players move.
Weaver officially started Bethesda Softworks on June 28, 1986. It was a part of Media Technology. He wanted to see if making games for personal computers would work. Gridiron! was the first game released by the company in 1986. It was made for Amiga, Atari ST, and Commodore 64 computers. The first few hundred copies sold out very quickly.
Other game companies noticed Bethesda's early games. Electronic Arts, a big game company, even hired Bethesda to help finish their first John Madden Football game. Bethesda later had a disagreement with Electronic Arts about Gridiron! and settled it out of court.
Growing Up (1990s)
In 1990, Bethesda Softworks moved its offices to Rockville, Maryland. By 1993, the company had 40 employees.
The first game Bethesda published that was based on a famous movie was The Terminator for MS-DOS. It came out in July 1991, around the same time the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day was in theaters.
In 1994, Bethesda released a very important game called The Elder Scrolls: Arena. This game was the first in the popular The Elder Scrolls role-playing video game series. Many other games in the series have been released since then.
Between 1994 and 1997, Bethesda worked on a space combat game called The 10th Planet. However, the movie company they were working with decided to stop the project. So, the game was never released.
In 1995, Bethesda Softworks bought another game developer called Flashpoint Productions. By 1996, Bethesda had grown to 75 employees. It was one of the biggest private companies publishing PC games.
In 1997 and 1998, Bethesda released two spin-off games from The Elder Scrolls series: Battlespire and Redguard. These games did not sell as well as Arena. Because of lower sales, the company faced some tough times.
In 1999, Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman created a new company called ZeniMax Media. ZeniMax Media became the main company that owned Bethesda Softworks. Bethesda Softworks then became a part of ZeniMax. By this time, Bethesda had nearly 100 employees.
New Focus (2000s)
In 2001, Bethesda Game Studios was created as a separate team to make games. This allowed Bethesda Softworks to focus completely on publishing games for all the companies under ZeniMax Media.
In 2004, Bethesda Softworks bought the rights to the Fallout game series. Bethesda Game Studios then started making Fallout 3, which was released in 2008. Many extra game packs were released for Fallout 3. Other Fallout games like Fallout: New Vegas (2010) and Fallout 4 (2015) were also published by Bethesda.
Between 2004 and 2008, other companies owned by ZeniMax released several bowling games. In 2006, Bethesda also got the rights to make Star Trek video games.
In 2008, Bethesda opened a new office in London, England, to help publish games in Europe. Later, they opened more offices in cities like Tokyo, Frankfurt, and Paris.
In 2009, ZeniMax Media bought id Software, a famous game studio. Bethesda Softworks then started publishing id Software's games, including Rage. Bethesda also published games from other independent game developers during this time.
Modern Era (2010s)
In 2011, Bethesda had a legal disagreement with Mojang (the creators of Minecraft) because Mojang wanted to name a new game Scrolls, which sounded too much like The Elder Scrolls.
In the early 2010s, Bethesda Softworks published popular games like Dishonored, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and The Evil Within.
Around the mid-2010s, Bethesda started trying new types of games. In 2015, they released Fallout Shelter, their first mobile game that was free to play. A year later, they released a new version of id Software's classic game Doom. They also released two more free mobile games based on The Elder Scrolls series.
When Nintendo released its new console, the Nintendo Switch, Bethesda supported it. They released versions of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Doom for the Switch in 2017. Later, Fallout Shelter also came to the Switch.
Some games like Prey and The Evil Within 2 did not sell as well as Fallout or The Elder Scrolls games.
In late 2018, Bethesda released its first massively multiplayer online game, Fallout 76. This game was a prequel to the Fallout series. When it first came out, it received mixed reviews and had some issues.
The next year, Bethesda announced new games like Rage 2 and Doom Eternal. Rage 2 was released in May 2019, and Doom Eternal came out in early 2020.
In 2016, Bethesda had its own computer program to launch games. However, this program was shut down in 2022.
Recent Times (2020s)
In March 2020, Bethesda Softworks published Doom Eternal. This game was a sequel to the 2016 Doom game. Its release was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In September 2020, Microsoft announced it would buy Bethesda's parent company, ZeniMax Media, for $7.5 billion. This meant Microsoft would own all of Bethesda's game development teams. The deal was completed on March 9, 2021. Microsoft said that Bethesda would still publish its own games. Also, many Bethesda games would become available on Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service. Some future Bethesda games would be only for Windows computers and Xbox Series X/S consoles.
In September 2021, Bethesda published Deathloop, a first-person shooter game. In March 2022, they released Ghostwire: Tokyo, a horror-themed action game. Both of these games were first released only on PlayStation 5 consoles for a limited time, because of earlier agreements. They later came out on Xbox.
In January 2023, Bethesda surprised everyone by releasing Hi-Fi Rush. They kept its development a secret. In May 2023, Bethesda launched Redfall, but it received mixed to negative reviews because of its story and technical problems.
In September 2023, Bethesda published Starfield. This was the first completely new game idea from Bethesda Game Studios in over 25 years. Starfield quickly became very popular, reaching ten million players across Xbox and PC by September 19. This made it the biggest game launch in Bethesda's history.
In October 2023, Pete Hines, who was in charge of publishing at Bethesda, announced he was retiring. Later that year, Jill Braff was appointed to lead Bethesda and ZeniMax Media's development teams.
In May 2024, Microsoft announced that they were closing some of Bethesda's game studios, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. This decision was made to focus on making bigger, more impactful games. The closure of Arkane Austin also meant that Redfall would not get any more new content.
Games published
- Wayne Gretzky Hockey (1988–1992)
- Terminator series (1990–1996)
- The Elder Scrolls series (1994–present)
- Symbiocom (1998)
- Zero Critical (1998)
- IHRA Drag Racing series (2000–2006)
- Pirates of the Caribbean series (2003–2006)
- Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2005)
- Star Trek series (2006–2007)
- Fallout series (2008–present)
- Wet (2009)
- Rogue Warrior (2009)
- Rage series (2010–2019)
- Brink (2011)
- Hunted: The Demon's Forge (2011)
- Dishonored series (2012–2017)
- Doom series (2012–present)
- Wolfenstein series (2014–present)
- The Evil Within series (2014–2017)
- Prey (2017)
- Deathloop (2021)
- Ghostwire: Tokyo (2022)
- Hi-Fi Rush (2023)
- Redfall (2023)
- Starfield (2023)
Technology
XnGine was a special 3-D graphics engine developed by Bethesda in the 1990s. It helped make games look more realistic. This engine allowed for faster action, different camera angles, and more freedom of movement in games.
XnGine could create weather effects like snow or fog. It also made realistic shadows and textured landscapes. In 1996, game designer Todd Howard said that XnGine was great at lighting effects. Lights from fires or the moon would spread and light up everything they touched.
The Terminator: Future Shock was the first game to use XnGine. It was also one of the first PC games to use the "mouse-look" way of controlling the camera, which is very common today. The XnGine was also used in games like Terminator: SkyNET, Daggerfall, and XCar: Experimental Racing.
Images for kids
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Bethesda Softworks' current logo.
See also
In Spanish: Bethesda Softworks para niños
