This week, Bethesda Game Studios is celebrating its 40th birthday—a celebration that included the full name reveal of The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, successfully completing the eight-year task of adding a word to a thing.

In addition, Bethesda is commemorating the occasion with the launch of a 40th anniversary site collecting the anecdotes and favorite memories of studio staff, including one Alan Nanes. Now a design director, Nanes was originally hired at Bethesda as one of its first full-time QA testers—and by his own description, he got the job by being a pleasant fellow to spend time with.

According to Nanes, his history with Bethesda started during Morrowind's development. He was close friends with Bethesda devs in multiple departments, and it was an era where that was enough to get you in the building.

"Things were a bit 'Wild West' back then, and my friends allowed me to hang out (yes, before I was an employee) there, playing multiplayer games with them and just getting to know everyone," Nanes wrote. "Eventually, Todd Howard noticed my presence in the studio and asked if I wanted to test out their new game."

In time, his impromptu testing sessions started attracting an audience of Bethesda developers who would pick his brain about their design choices, scribble notes, and debate with each other about potential tweaks to the game while watching over his shoulder.

"It was an extraordinary feeling, the first time I felt like I was contributing to the creation of an actual videogame (I believe you can find my name in the Morrowind manual's credits under 'Special Thanks')," Nanes said. "After this became a regular occurrence, Todd Howard and Ashley Cheng seemed to decide having full-time, in-studio QA would be a valuable addition to the team, and I took on that mantle."

Nanes later graduated to a quest designer position for Oblivion, and was more recently credited as lead companions designer on Starfield. But while his tenure at Bethesda might've had a storybook trajectory, the history of QA workers at the studio has been a contentious one in the years since Nanes was hired.

Driven by frustrations surrounding compensation, advancement opportunities, workload, and more, QA workers at Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax initiated a unionization vote in 2022, officially forming ZeniMax Workers United - CWA—then the largest videogame union in the US—when the vote succeeded in January 2023.

Those frustrations remained unaddressed as contract negotiations with Microsoft stalled for over two years, driving the QA union to vote overwhelmingly in favor of authorizing a strike in April 2025. Its contract was ultimately ratified in June 2025. When a number of those QA workers were affected by Xbox's July 2026 layoffs, that contract allowed the union to enter into an "effects bargaining" process to negotiate severance terms for its impacted members, culminating in "a significant agreement" in September 2026.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End marks a high point for the series in terms of emotionally resonant storytelling, capping off a rollicking, action-packed adventure with a surprisingly poignant epilogue showing Nathan Drake's comparatively mundane life as a father 15 years after the events of the main story. I've played that game so many times I've lost count, and the ending never fails to wet my eyes just a little. That's why I was shocked to hear creative director Neil Druckmann put together the rough outline within weeks, according to a developer who was working with him at the time.

Ryan Trowbridge, who was character technical director on Uncharted 2 through 4, tells Kiwi Talkz that Druckmann ran an "efficient" ship at Naughty Dog when he took over as creative director from Amy Hennig, who left the studio abruptly in early 2014 during Uncharted 4's development.

"He was put forth with probably what felt like a very arduous task of 'how do you take this IP and make number four of Uncharted, and breathe more life into it, and keep going, and also take over a project that's already been in production for a while'," says Trowbridge. "And he so quickly took what was there. In my recollection, it seemed like it took him only a couple weeks to regather himself."

Trowbridge says it's possible Druckmann knew about his new role for longer than was apparent, which would've given him more time to prepare a new story for Uncharted 4, "but he went and he had written a new" plot for the game. Druckmann had "adjusted to the story, took advantage of a bunch of things that he had already done, added some other things that he felt were needed, and very quickly got us on track."

Druckmann and game director Bruce Straley definitely had big shoes to fill in the wake of Hennig's departure, which itself sparked major controversy when IGN reported that Druckmann and Straley forcibly removed Hennig from the project. Naughty Dog immediately denied that claim and it was officially retracted by IGN years later, but Druckmann's role as successor to Hennig on Uncharted 4 remains one of the most controversial topics in the Naughty Dog pantheon to this day. The fact that the game itself is nothing short of a gameplay and narrative triumph is a testament to Druckmann and Straley's perseverance in the face of intense scrutiny.

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