So that’s one thing. But what’s wilder about all this is that this isn’t the first time this exact thing has happened. Around this time last year, Stephanie Zachariadis, who was then Fallout: London’s head writer, left the development team after also being hired by Bethesda Game Studios as a quest designer.

And in the update announcing this latest departure, the team announced that another one of its members was also offered a role at Bethesda. This time it was the mod’s very own project manager Dean Carter, who was apparently offered a position to work on Fallout 76 at Bethesda’s UK office. However, Carter declined the job after some “very hard soul searching,” and will stick around to see Fallout: London through to completion. 

The London team suggested that some modders use large, well-known projects for “pure CV padding,” while others do it for the community, the team, and the fans. It “isn’t easy to turn down your life dream” to instead work on a fan mod for free, they wrote, and suggested that Carter’s choice to stay was a sign of his “selflessness” and “dedication” to the mod and its team.

As for Fallout: London, a large-scale PC mod that will add a brand-new London-themed world to Fallout 4 complete with new quests and weapons, the devs behind the project said Johnson’s departure won’t cause any delays in development. Apparently his departure has been known for some time and he helped ensure the team could properly move on before he left.