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 aren’t properly supported.
The ex-Bethesda leader, who announced his retirement in 2023 after 24 years with the company, shared his thoughts on the state of the gaming industry in a recent interview with DBLTAP. Beyond reflecting on the early days of the studio behind Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, Hines outlined his concerns about the future of services like Game Pass.
He acknowledges that his retirement from Microsoft-owned Bethesda means his perspective may no longer be current. Still, Hines says he saw “some short-sighted decision-making several years ago” that now seems to be unfolding exactly as he predicted.
“Subscriptions have become the new four-letter word, right? You can’t just buy a product anymore,” Hines said. “When you’re talking about a subscription built on content, if you don’t figure out how to balance the needs of the service and its operators with the people creating that content—without whom your subscription is worth jack s***—then you’ve got a real problem.”
That imbalance is harming many, including the creators themselves, as they’re forced into an ecosystem that fails to properly value or reward their work.
Gamers have debated the sustainability of platforms like Game Pass since its 2017 launch. While a library filled with hundreds of games sounds like a player’s dream, how those games’ developers are supported has remained unclear.
As Game Pass pushed forward into the early 2020s and PlayStation launched its own PlayStation Plus-centered competitor, more questions arose. Former PlayStation head Shawn Layden is among those who recently critiqued the gaming subscription service model, calling the “Netflix of gaming” concept a “danger” and questioning, “...is it healthy for the developer?”
Microsoft announced that Game Pass achieved $5 billion in revenue over the last year this past July, just after laying off hundreds of workers across its gaming division that same month. Today, Hines argues that the pressure of sustaining a subscription model is undermining the very developers it depends on. He believes this reliance is “hurting a lot of people.”
“You need to properly acknowledge, compensate, and recognize what it takes to create that content—not just make a game, but make a product,” he added. “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.”
AnswerSee ResultsTwo Bethesda studios – Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks – were shut down in May 2024, though the latter was later saved after PUBG publisher Krafton acquired it from Xbox. Following widespread 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.”
