Skyrim and Fallout artist says Todd Howard would tell devs "we can do anything but we can't do everything," and 95% of player-reported issues were flagged internally before launch

These days, the vast majority of games ship with bugs that are later patched out, but Bethesda games in particular have earned themselves a somewhat dubious reputation for the sheer amount of glitches and performance issues they usually have at launch. To this day, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has bugs that have persisted for 15 years, and a former Bethesda artist who worked on the game has shared a design philosophy held by executive producer Todd Howard that may have contributed to that association.

In a recently resurfaced clip from a 2025 interview with Kiwi Talkz, former Bethesda senior artist Dennis Mejillones estimates 95% of the issues players report when Bethesda games launch were already flagged internally.