You may recall that earlier this month a report accused Bethesda of "crunch culture" and a toxic workplace environment that "destroyed people." Several QA testers working at Bethesda during the development of Fallout 76 spoke out about their experience, detailing how they were often pressured into crunching - usually on the weekends - with some sources going so far to claim that it wasn't out of the ordinary to see employees in wrist braces.
According to a new report from Kotaku, Xbox head Matt Booty allegedly defended the developer in an all-hands meeting, saying that he's "confident" the studio wasn't crunching. Kotaku claims to have seen a video in which Matt Booty talks about the outlet's initial report, saying that Microsoft takes reports of crunch "seriously", but still thinks it's "unfair to put that on one studio."
"Crunch culture is…if you go back 10 years ago, it’s a little unfair to put that on one studio,” says Booty. "It was just part of the industry. I don’t say that to justify it, I’m just saying it was part of the culture of the industry. I literally slept under my desk early in my career. And we looked at that like a badge of honor."
While it seems pretty likely here that Booty is talking about his experience in the distant past, it doesn't do much to address Kotaku's report on the development of Fallout 76 which released in 2018. Instead, Booty claims that the horrible working conditions at Bethesda that were outlined in Kotaku's original report are no longer an issue, explaining that "we do not have a situation where people are crunching."
Despite that, Booty covers his bases by saying that crunch could be happening without his knowledge and urges employees to raise concerns and "report that anonymously back to us." Booty then goes on to explain that people should only work overtime if they're excited or passionate but fails to address circumstances like significant peer pressure that could force someone into working hours they're not comfortable with.