In 2010, Bethesda Softworks published Fallout: New Vegas, a spin-off game in the Fallout series that was developed by Obsidian Entertainment rather than Bethesda Game Studios, the team that had created Fallout 3.  Since this time, the company has never worked with an outside developer in this manner again and Bethesda's Todd Howard doesn't see that changing.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, Todd Howard, Game Director at Bethesda Game Studios, said that he doesn't see Bethesda ever working with an outside developer in this way again. Howard stated, "I wouldn’t say never, [but] now that our company is so big, it’s always better to keep stuff internal ... it becomes less likely, but I could never say never. I thought the Obsidian guys did a fabulous job.”

As Howard stated, Bethesda Game Studios' size nearly a decade ago was much smaller compared to what it is now. Currently, the company has three different branches in Rockville, Austin, and Montreal with 400 people employed in total. This larger size is also why Bethesda was able to announce work on a variety of new games -- - Starfield, The Elder Scrolls VI, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, Fallout 76 -- at E3 this past month.

Even though some fans have been clamoring in recent years for Bethesda to allow other developers to work on their IP, hopes of this happening should likely be put to rest now. Bethesda Game Studios has proven that if we're going to get spin-offs like Fallout 76 moving forward, it's just going to come from the team that is most intimately familiar with those properties.