Xbox's Booty "confident" there's no crunch at Bethesda now

pcgamesinsider.biz:

The head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty has apparently told staff that there isn't any crunch occurring at Bethesda and ZeniMax anymore.

That's according to Kotaku, which reports that recently an all-hands company meeting took place in the wake of allegations of crunch culture at the company on projects including Skyrim and 2018's Fallout 76.

Speaking to staff, Booty said that he was "confident" that there wasn't people crunching of any issues of bullying at Bethesda and ZeniMax these days, noting that what was covered in Kotaku's report was in the past.

“Crunch culture is…if you go back 10 years ago, it’s a little unfair to put that on one studio,” Booty said. “It was just part of the industry. I don’t say that to justify it, I’m just saying it was part of the culture of the industry. I literally slept under my desk early in my career. And we looked at that like a badge of honour.”

He continued: “I know from talking to Bethesda leadership that we do not have a situation where people are crunching and we’ve got this bullying atmosphere…I’m confident about that.”