Bethesda Softworks

What Bethesda Softworks is

Bethesda Softworks is the publishing division of ZeniMax Media. ZeniMax's about page describes the group as a video game publisher headquartered just north of Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia, and says its Bethesda Softworks division was founded in 1986. The general-information block on Bethesda's studio site gives the company address as Bethesda Softworks LLC, 1370 Piccard Drive, Rockville, MD 20850, with a telephone number and a press address.

ZeniMax lists the franchises held by the group as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM, RAGE, Wolfenstein, Prey, Dishonored, The Evil Within and QUAKE. The same page makes two claims about the publishing house in its own words: that Bethesda pioneered open world role-playing games, and that it was the first studio to offer downloadable content for players after a game's release.

Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas is one of the titles Bethesda Softworks published. Its Steam store page lists the release date as 19 October 2010, names Obsidian Entertainment as the developer and Bethesda Softworks as the publisher, and files the game under the Fallout franchise. The same page lists the expansions sold alongside the base game: Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, Gun Runners' Arsenal and Courier's Stash.

The distinction matters for how the two names are used. Fallout: New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a studio outside Bethesda, and the Bethesda name appears on the store page as the company that released it. The title was later listed among the back catalogue Microsoft added to Xbox Game Pass after taking over the ZeniMax studios, in a post dated 11 March 2021 that also named Fallout 4 and Fallout 76.

How the publisher became part of Microsoft

Microsoft's agreement to acquire ZeniMax Media, described in the Xbox announcement as the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, was published on 21 September 2020. That post measures the Bethesda group at 2,300 people worldwide and lists the companies involved, from Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studios through to Roundhouse Studios. It also states that Bethesda's games will be added to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC.

The deal closed the following spring. A second Xbox post, dated 9 March 2021, states that the acquisition of ZeniMax Media was complete and names eight development studios joining the Xbox family. Microsoft's own financial filing for the year ended 30 June 2021 records the completed purchase of ZeniMax Media Inc., described there as the parent company of Bethesda Softworks LLC, at a total price of $8.1 billion.

How the publisher presents itself

The contact details the publisher publishes are limited and specific: the Rockville address, a general telephone line and a press address on the studio site, plus a support portal at help.bethesda.net. Bethesda's brand site links its contact page to ZeniMax's corporate domain and runs news feeds split by franchise, with support, service status and legal documents held on separate subdomains. No publisher-only site exists for the group.

That brand site is where release news appears, including game-specific pages for each franchise and feeds that carry patches and event notes. The publisher's own material is therefore spread across a corporate domain for the group and a network of game sites for the individual titles, rather than a single publisher page listing everything the company has released. Readers looking for a catalogue therefore have to work through the individual game sites.

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