Bethesda’s Pete Hines weighs in on the dumbest Starfield controversy so far

If you've made the wise decision to get off of Twitter in recent months then you may have missed the latest drama around Starfield. The game's status as an Xbox and PC exclusive has already ruffled plenty of feathers. In the latest attempt to criticise the unreleased game, a former Blizzard developer pointed to the game's main menu screen as proof that the game will be bad. 

Mark Kern, known as Grummz on Twitter, previously worked at Blizzard in the early days, working on Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 and eventually, World of Warcraft. In a tweet over the weekend, Kern pointed to a leaked screenshot of Starfield's main menu screen, somehow claiming that its simplicity is a sign that the game was “rushed”, adding that it could also be a sign that the development team “didn't care” about the project and just wanted to get it out of the door.

A lot of people have already rightfully made fun of this take, as the main menu screen should be the last thing anyone cares about when picking up a new game. Bethesda executive and long-time PR man, Pete Hines, addressed the situation himself yesterday afternoon, clarifying that Starfield's menu has been in place for years and is one of the first things that the development team settled on.

Hines added that this sort of dig is “highly unprofessional coming from another dev”.

Since leaving Blizzard, Kern attempted to run his own studio, Red 5, with the goal of releasing a new MMO, Firefall. After a good chunk of budget was spent on a custom Firefall bus as part of a marketing stunt, and a string of other issues at Red 5 studios, Kern was ousted as CEO of the company. Firefall eventually shut down in 2017.

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KitGuru Says: Bethesda has had plenty of misses over the last console generation but there seems to be this weird online obsession with tearing the company down ahead of Starfield's release. This particular attempt might be the craziest I've seen so far. 

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