[2][3] By 2008, Bethesda Game Studios was considered one of the industry's top developers due to the reputation of The Elder Scrolls fantasy universe and the critically acclaimed Fallout 3.

Bethesda had created a unique role for itself, “spending years to create massive, open-world, single-player RPGs — hardly a booming genre in the industry at large — to great success, bringing a once-niche PC genre to a broad multiplatform audience,” wrote Gamasutra in their year-end best-of list.

[11] The unit includes artists, developers, and engineers; unlike its parent company ZeniMax, which exclusively represents QA testers.

[13] ZeniMax Media announced the opening of BattleCry Studios in Austin, Texas, on October 3, 2012, with Rich Vogel as its president.

[14] The studio immediately began hiring developers with experience in microtransactions and free-to-play games, growing to roughly 35 employees by November 2013.

[17] However, the studio laid off a significant portion of its staff in September 2015, followed by the cancellation of BattleCry in October to focus on different projects.

[25][26] Mustaine had previously co-founded Ritual Entertainment, while Tardif had been an executive producer and the senior vice president of business development at Gearbox Software.

[35][37] In June 2024, the studio's developers announced their intent to unionize with support from the Canadian branch of the Communications Workers of America.

[40][41] In 2015, the studio entered into the mobile gaming market with Fallout Shelter based on the same franchise, which gained 50 million players by mid-2016.

[44] On June 10, 2018, during Bethesda's E3 2018 conference, the other project in development was revealed to be the company's first new intellectual property in 25 years, Starfield.