Bethesda Softworks’ former senior vice president of global marketing and communications, Pete Hines, says gaming subscription services like Xbox Game Pass are “worth jack s***” if the game developers who create content for them are not properly supported.
The ex-Bethesda figurehead, who announced his retirement in 2023 after 24 years with the company, opened up about the state of the gaming industry during a new interview with DBLTAP. In addition to touching on the early days of the company behind Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, Hines spoke about what he feels the future of services like Game Pass looks like.
He admits his retirement from the Microsoft-owned Bethesda means his view on the matter may not be up to date. However, Hines says he witnessed what he “considered to be some short sighted decision making several years ago” that now appears to be “bearing out the way I said.”
“Subscriptions have become the new four letter word, right? You can’t buy a product anymore,” Hines said. “When you talk about a subscription that relies on content, if you don’t figure out how to balance the needs of the service and the people running the service with the people who are providing the content – without which your subscription is worth jack s*** – then you have a real problem.”
Gamers have discussed the viability of platforms like Game Pass since its launch in 2017. While a service flooded with hundreds of games for subscribers to play sounds like a dream come true for players, how the developers behind these games receive support has been hazy.
As Game Pass pushed forward into the early 2020s and PlayStation eventually established its own PlayStation Plus-centered competitor, more question marks popped up. Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden is one of many who recently critiqued the gaming subscription service model, calling the “’Netflix of gaming’ idea” a “danger” that has him questioning, “…is it healthy for the developer?”
Microsoft touted that Game Pass achieved $5 billion in revenue over the last year this past July after laying off hundreds of workers across its gaming branch earlier that same month. Today, Hines adds that the pressure of an ongoing gaming subscription service is affecting the very developers it needs to exist in the first place. It’s a reliance on this model that he feels is “hurting a lot of people.”
“You need to properly acknowledge, compensate and recognize what it takes to create that content and not just make a game, but make a product,” he elaborated. “That tension is hurting a lot of people, including the content creators themselves, because they’re fitting into an ecosystem that is not properly valuing and rewarding what they’re making.”
Two Bethesda studios – Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks – were shut down in May 2024, though the latter was eventually saved after PUBG publisher Krafton acquired it from Xbox. In the wake of mass layoffs and studio closures, original Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio called Game Pass the “elephant in the room” and an “unsustainable model.” He added, “I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models, they’ll either kill everyone else, or give up.”
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
