Now Starfield’s out, Bethesda’s PR and publishing honcho Pete Hines is retiring after 20-plus years at the studio

rockpapershotgun.com:

Pete Hines, head of publishing at Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Starfield studio Bethesda, is retiring. One of the most public faces at the developer behind perhaps only Toddy H himself, Hines has played a prominent role in the release of their biggest games for close to the last quarter-of-a-century - but says that the “time is right” to move on to “an exciting new chapter of my life”.

Hines joined Bethesda in 1999 - literally last century (have an existential crisis about that as necessary) - helping to head up its global marketing and communications output as senior VP ahead of the release of Morrowind in 2002. In the time since, he played a huge part in the release of the studio’s widely beloved and acclaimed Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim (as well as the many, many re-releases of Skyrim across multiple generations and even VR), as well as helping ride the studio through rockier times around the release of Fallout 76 and this year’s Redfall.

While overseeing the launch of the studio’s most successful games, Hines also ran into some amount of controversy during his time at the spear-tip of Bethesda’s PR machine by announcing plans to pull pre-release access for all reviewers in 2016 - a decision that was later reversed, although even this year’s Starfield wasn’t made available to every outlet before its launch - and allegedly blacklisting other publications.

Last November, Hines moved over to become head of publishing, continuing to hype up (depending on your personal taste for enormous, hours-eating games) the then-incoming Starfield by calling it "irresponsibly large" in an effort to explain why it was an Xbox exclusive during the Microsoft-Blizzard discussions.

The release of Starfield - said to be Bethesda’s