Arena<\/em> and Daggerfall<\/em> before passing the torch to Todd Howard.”,”image_url”:”https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/LeFay-500×500-1753300630.jpg”,”listing_image_url”:”https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/LeFay-768×432.jpg”}”>
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LeFay spearheaded Arena and Daggerfall before passing the torch to Todd Howard.
Julian LeFay, the man often credited as “the father of The Elder Scrolls,” has died at the age of 59, his creative partners announced this week.
“It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that we inform our community of the passing of Julian LeFay, our beloved Technical Director and co-founder of Once Lost Games,” his colleagues wrote in a Bluesky post.
LeFay spent most of the 1990s at Bethesda Softworks, culminating in his work on The Elder Scrolls series into the late ’90s.
His career didn’t start with The Elder Scrolls, though. Beginning in 1988, LeFay made music for the Amiga hack-and-slash game Sword of Sodan as well as the NES game Where’s Waldo, and he did design and programming work on titles like 1988’s Wayne Gretzky Hockey, the DOS version of Dragon’s Lair, and two DOS games based on the Terminator movie franchise.
In the early ’90s, he joined fellow Bethesda developers Ted Peterson and Vijay Lakshman on an Ultima Underworld-inspired RPG that would come to be called The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Though famed creative director Todd Howard has helmed the franchise since its third entry, The Elder Scrolls: Arena and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall were chiefly spearheaded by LeFay. One of the gods of The Elder Scrolls universe was named after LeFay, and the setting was inspired by the literature and tabletop role-playing games LeFay and Peterson enjoyed.
LeFay left Bethesda in 1998, but nonetheless contributed to the Howard-led The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as a contractor. Since then, he has held various technology roles, such as CTO at a wide variety of companies both in and outside the games industry.
He didn’t leave his passion for computer role-playing games behind, though. Since 2019, LeFay had worked closely with Peterson and Lakshman on a spiritual successor to Arena and Daggerfall called The Wayward Realms. The project was partially funded on Kickstarter and is still in development.
Earlier this month, The Wayward Realms studio Once Lost Games announced that LeFay had been battling cancer for years and that his doctors had concluded that he did not have much time left. As a result, he stepped away from day-to-day work on the project to spend time with family.
That said, “even during his illness, he continued to share his vision with our team, mentor our developers, and ensure that every aspect of the game reflected his commitment to creating something truly extraordinary,” the announcement of his passing from Once Lost Games said.
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