Bethesda's Head of Publishing, Pete Hines, has hit back at World of Warcraft designer Mark Kern after Kern said Starfield's start screen suggests it "either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care".

"The physiognomy of start screens. The start screen of a game can reveal a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they took in their work," Kern tweeted. 

"Starfield's start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care.

"Start screen [sic] are often done at the very end of development," they added in a follow-up tweet. "Teams are too busy making the core game. It's quite common for the start screen to completely change once the game is shipping or on patch 0.

"Teams that take pride want to put a good face forward and will often redo these just prior to game going live," Kern concluded.

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After a commenter alerted them to Kern's tweets, Hines responded in kind earlier today, saying: "Or [the development team] designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on. 

"Having an opinion is one thing. Questioning out a developer’s 'care' because you would have done it different is highly unprofessional coming from another 'dev'."

Kern bit back earlier today with a snide comment about Fallout 76 and Redfall. 

There's no point asking any of the developers making Starfield for sneaky info about the highly-anticipated action RPG – according to Bethesda Game Studio's studio design director, Bethesda boss Todd Howard is the only person "authorized" to give away "unreleased game information".

What we do know, however, is that the sci-fi game recently went gold, and you can preload Starfield right now on Xbox Series X|S and PC (though Steam players will need to wait until August 30) if you've pre-ordered the game, or are planning on downloading it from the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

You may have to free up some space beforehand, though – Starfield will take up a sizeable 100.19GB on Xbox Series X|S for Standard Edition players and 117.07GB for those rocking the Premium Edition. PC and Steam users have it worse still, with Bethesda's spacefaring RPG taking up an eye-watering 139.84GB.

Want to go all-in on Starfield hardware for your Xbox before the game launches? Here's where you can buy the Starfield Xbox Wireless Controller, as well as where to buy the Starfield Xbox Wireless Headset.