Why is Starfield’s main menu stirring controversy? Dev fires back at viral criticism

Starfield’s start screen has been drawing some criticism from other developers for its simplistic style. While most think that it’s of little import, one Bethesda employee has lept to the team’s defense.

Starfield is just around the corner and players can expect to blast off on September 6, August 31 if they’ve preordered the Premium Edition. Bethesda’s space-faring RPG is set to be one of the biggest launches in a stacked 2023.

The game looks absolutely massive with a tonne of stuff to do including shipbuilding, smuggling, sandwich piracy, and settlement crafting. Fans have conferred so much power to Starfield, they’re even saying the game single-handedly restored Pluto’s status as a planet.

So, why is a game with this much content being maligned over something as simple as its start screen? Well, an ex-Blizzard developer took to Twitter to literally judge a book by its cover. Here’s what happened.

The physiognomy of start screens.

The start screen of a game can reveal a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they took in their work.

Starfield's start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care. pic.twitter.com/Ok4gzQ3DVo

— Grummz (@Grummz) August 19, 2023

Devs duke it out over Starfield title screen

Former team lead for World of Warcraft Mark Kern fired off a hot take on Twitter that Starfield’s main menu was indicative of a rush job or lack of care. “Starfield’s start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn’t care,” Kern posited.

Almost nobody was having a bar of it though as gamers rushed to comment examples of other well-made games with minimalistic titles. People cited Ghost of Tsushima and Elden Ring as examples, as well as other Bethesda works like Skyrim and Fallout 3.

Kern responded to fans who used Skyrim and Fallout titles to disprove his take. “I seem to recall they were passionate teams that shipped fast and buggy. Seems to fit my point!”

Bethesda’s Head of Publishing Pete Hines was tagged in the original Tweet and voiced his vexation that a fellow developer would attack a team like this. “Having an opinion is one thing,” Hines said. “Questioning out a developer’s “care” because you would have done it different is highly unprofessional coming from another “dev”.”

Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on.

Having an opinion is one thing. Questioning out a developer’s “care” because you would have done it different is highly unprofessional coming from another “dev”

— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) August 20, 2023

The Starfield main menu’s sleek minimalism will probably be the least interesting part of an RPG with this many gameplay systems. Still, it should be noted that the title screen certainly isn’t indicative of how much care and effort went into the title.

Bethesda’s decision to release the game for review two weeks ahead of launch shows massive confidence in the product. Xbox Head Matt Booty even promised that Starfield would have “the fewest bugs any Bethesda game ever shipped with”.