The man behind The Elder Scrolls and Fallout for nearly three decades apparently pictures life outside game development sometimes too. Todd Howard’s admission wasn’t made in a moment of despair — he said it calmly, answering journalists’ questions — but the timing landed right in the middle of a genuinely turbulent period for the studio.
The trigger was a fresh round of layoffs at Microsoft affecting thousands of Xbox employees, Bethesda Game Studios included. It was against that backdrop that Howard gave two telling interviews — one to Jez Corden of Windows Central, another to Jason Schreier of Bloomberg.
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What Todd Howard Said About His Future
Howard told Schreier there was a stretch of time when he seriously thought through what stepping away from the profession might actually look like. Not because a decision had been made — more as a thought experiment. Those thoughts are gone now, he says: the work his team is doing and the people he works with still genuinely bring him satisfaction. He also pointed out that plenty of people in the industry “a bit older” than him are still making interesting games — a nod to the idea that age alone isn’t a reason to step back.
How Bethesda Has Weathered Crises Before
Talking to Corden, Howard drew a parallel to the studio’s past. He brought up the rough patch in the 90s, when the underwhelming Battlespire and Redguard forced Bethesda to rethink its entire approach to development. That was followed by the merger into ZeniMax, and then another shake-up in 2016, when the team split and changed how it supported its core franchises. In his view, the studio is once again going through a phase of change — which, by his logic, is less a crisis and more a recurring pattern.
Key points to keep in mind:
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The Xbox layoffs did touch Bethesda, but they haven’t halted work on its flagship projects.
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The Elder Scrolls VI remains in active development — it’s what Howard is currently focused on.
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The studio also announced Fallout 5, along with remasters of Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3.
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Howard’s comments read less like damage control and more like an attempt to reassure the community through historical context.
The takeaway for players is fairly simple: restructuring and layoffs at Xbox are an industry-wide reality, but the fate of TES VI and Fallout 5 isn’t in question right now. That said, statements from studio leadership tend to sound rosier than what’s actually happening internally — so it’s worth watching for whether concrete news about timelines or team composition follows.
