Pete Hines Defends TESO Subscription Fee

Speaking with GameSpot, Bethesda’s VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines defended The Elder Scrolls Online’s much-maligned subscription fee, arguing that the game will have an ongoing “value proposition” that will more than justify it, and that would simply not have been possible with a free-to-play model:

“We feel pretty strongly about the support we’re going to have for the game and what you’re going to get for those dollars,” he said when asked why The Elder Scrolls Online was not pursuing a free-to-play model. “We’re also very confident in our ability to support it with content. And not content of the magnitude of, it’s a new month, here’s a new sword or here’s a funny hat–but content that is real and significant and it feels like regular and consistent DLC releases.”

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Hines described how this approach would have been affected had Bethesda chosen to adopt a free-to-play model, stating that the percentage of the team Bethesda could afford to assign to create future content would depend upon the The Elder Scrolls Online’s base sales performance.

“That just seems like a lesser game, and we’re not going to make a lesser game that might be more palatable,” he continued. “We want to do the version that we think is the best game and the coolest experience. And that means putting a lot of people and a lot of content creators towards having stuff that comes our regularly; every four weeks, five weeks, six weeks. Big new stuff that you want to do.”