Bethesda Softworks was founded by Weaver in Bethesda, Maryland in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited, an engineering research and development firm of which Weaver was founder and CEO.He created Bethesda "to see if the PC market was a viable place to develop games".

Vlatko Andonov, who serves as President of Bethesda, recalls that Weaver had originally wanted to call the company "Softworks", but found the name taken. "So, our founder, sitting at his kitchen table in Bethesda decided after laborious thought to add Bethesda to Softworks and there you have it!"