This Fallout 4 mod looks so good Bethesda just hired one of its designers

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Bethesda also tried hiring the mod's project lead, who ultimately declined the offer.

London in the post-apocalypse
(Image credit: Bethesda / The Folon Team)

I imagine the dream for many modders, who largely work as volunteer developers, is to catch the eye of a big game studio and get a job there. It's happened with Valve in particular (it hired the modders who created Counter-Strike, Dota, and Team Fortress, just to name a few). Modder Brendan Greene was hired by Bluehole to create PUBG, Dean Hall went from contract worker to project lead at Bohemia based on his DayZ mod, Riot hired CS:GO pro and map-maker Sal Garazzo, who's now co-lead game designer for Valorant… the list goes on.

The list goes on right here, actually. A developer working on a mod we've been writing a lot about lately, Fallout: London, has been hired by Bethesda. Lead technical adviser for the upcoming "DLC-sized" Fallout 4 mod, Ryan Johnson, is leaving the project to take a job as an associate level designer at Bethesda, according to an announcement from the mod team. The announcement doesn't mention which Bethesda game Johnson will work on, though Fallout 76 would seem a pretty good bet.

The announcement also reassures fans that Johnson's departure won't seriously impact the development of the mod. "Luckily for us, we have known about this move for awhile and thus Ropiequet has helped collate his knowledge into invaluable design documentation so the rest of the team can work on in his stead seamlessly," the announcement states. (Ropiequet is Johnson's online handle).

"More so, Ropiequet finished all of his expected level design tasks as well as a few extra ones we didn't expect him to do! The man's professionalism and dedication will honestly and truly be missed and felt throughout the team, however it brings us hand on heart joy to know that he will be taking his amazing talents to a company we all love."

This isn't the first time Bethesda has plucked talent from the Fallout: London mod team. Last year it hired Fallout: London's lead writer, Stephanie Zachariadis, as an associate quest designer. And according to the mod team, another job offer was recently made to Fallout: London's project lead Dean Carter to work on Fallout 76, though after "some very hard soul searching" Carter decided to decline the offer to continue work on the mod.

As we saw recently, Fallout: London is shaping up to be a huge and interesting mod, what with all the bike-riding, boat-piloting, and weaponized elephants in post-apocalyptic England. The mod is due out sometime in 2023… unless the entire team gets hired by Bethesda before then. 

Thanks, GamesRadar.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.