Bethesda Softworks is an American video game publishing company. Christopher founded this company. Initially, it was actually a video game developer. The company now also publishes games by BattleCry Studios, MacgineGames, Zenimax Online Studios, Tango Gameworks and id software.
History & wiki
Christopher Weaver founded the company in 1986 in Bethesda. It was founded as a division of MTL. Media Technology Limited was an engineering research firm. Weaver was the founder and CEO of the firm. He founded Bethesda to see the opportunity of developing games in the PC market.
Vlatko Andonov, the president of Bethesda, stated that Weaver actually wanted to name it as ‘Softworks’, but the name was already taken. So he decided to name it as Bethesda Softworks. Bethesda is credited with Gridiron.
Early Stage:
Bethesda acquired the rights of distribution of the upcoming versions of Gridiron. The company moved to Maryland in 1990. It worked on many major projects including The Elder Scrolls RPG. The first chapter of The Elder Scrolls RPG was The Elder Scrolls: Arena. It was released in 1994. It is also famous for publishing titles based upon hit movie franchises, including Star Trek, The Terminator and The Pirates of the Caribbean.
In 1995 the company got a development studio, Flashpoint productions. In 1997 an in 1998 the Elder Scroll was expanded through Battlespire and Redguard, but neither of them became as successful as Arena. For Bethesda, Robert A Altman formed a new company, ZeniMax Media. In an interview, Altman described that it was more like a top-level administrative structure than just a parent company.
Bethesda Game Studios was established in 2001 and Bethesda became a publishing company, a publishing company of ZeniMax Media. In 2002 Weaver filed against ZeniMax. He stated that his business partners betrayed him. The lawsuit was settled in 2007. From Providence Equity Partners Bethesda raised $450 million. It helped them to expand the company.
In 2008 it opened a branch of publishing in London for distributing titles throughout Europe. The even opened publishing houses in Paris, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Benelux, and Sydney. In 2009 Zenimax acquired id Software. Since then their titles, including Rage, were published by Bethesda.
Awards & achievements
In 2017 the company was nominated for some game awards. It has not received any notable awards yet, but no one can predict the future.
The net worth of Bethesda
As of December 2024, The net worth of Bethesda Softworks is $3 billion. Most of the company’s net worth comes from its income from the video games developed and published by the company. Some of the famous games published by Bethesda are Doom, Rage, Dishonored series, The Evil Within series and Rogue Warrior.
The Company is associated with many controversies. In the year of 2001the company published a game named Echelon which was developed by Russian developers’ media. The developers said that the publishing company did not pay a single cent to them from the boxed sales of the game. They wrote an open letter, but Bethesda refused to pay.
Bethesda sued Interplay entertainment in 2009 over Fallout trademark infringement. After a long legal battle, it was settled in 2012 in which Interplay received $2 million, and Bethesda Softworks got the right to Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics.