Bethesda exec and former World of Warcraft director clash over Starfield’s leaked title screen

A Bethesda exec has clashed with a former World of Warcraft lead over the latter’s comments on Starfield’s leaked title screen.

Former World of Warcraft director Mark Kern tweeted a screenshot of the Starfield title screen on Saturday, and suggested that not enough time had been spent on it.

“The start screen of a game can reveal a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they took in their work,” Kern wrote.

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“Starfield’s start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn’t care.”

He went on: “Start screens are often done at the very end of development. Teams are too busy making the core game. It’s quite common for the start screen to completely change once the game is shipping or on patch 0. Teams that take pride want to put a good face forward and will often redo these just prior to game going live.”

Kern’s comments attracted criticism, notably from Bethesda‘s head of publishing Pete Hines, who refuted Kern’s suggestion that the title screen meant the team either didn’t care or was too rushed to complete it.

“Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on,” Hines replied.

“Having an opinion is one thing. Questioning out a developer’s ‘care’ because you would have done it different is highly unprofessional coming from another ‘dev’.”

In a now deleted tweet (as spotted by Wccftech), Microsoft studio InXile made a sarcastic reference to the debate by joking that it was moving all developer resources off the main game to focus on the start screen.

“The campaign will be 45 minutes long but the start screen will be 20+ hours,” it reportedly read.

Bethesda announced last week that Starfield had gone gold ahead of its release next month, indicating that the main development of the game has been completed, and that it’s ready to move to the manufacturing stage.

Players can preload the game on Xbox Series X/S now, and on Steam on August 30, ahead of its September 6 release date.