Starfield is just a few weeks away, and various leaks related to Bethesda Game Studios' sci-fi RPG have started to trickle onto social media. One such leak, a picture of the game's start menu, set off a firestorm of opinions, causing Bethesda's head of publishing, Pete Hines, to step in to defend Bethesda Game Studios' work.

The "controversy," as silly as it is, started with an August 19 tweet including the leaked menu and comments on what it allegedly told users about the game itself. Starfield's start menu is extremely straightforward. It features a simple menu with options for New Game, Load, Settings, Photo Gallery, Crew, and Quit amidst a backdrop of Starfield's logo and a sun poking around the horizon of a planet.

The tweet came from Mark Kern, who previously worked at Blizzard as the team lead for the original World of Warcraft before leaving to form his own game studio (from which he was forcibly removed in 2013). He stated "start screens can reveal a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they took in their work." He continued, "Starfield's start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care." Kern said "start screens are often done at the very end of development." Teams that "take pride" in their work, Kern said, will often redo a start screen just prior to a game shipping in order to "put a good face forward."