Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: Fallout 76’s Launch Is Going Just as Well as Expected

It’s been a little over two weeks since Bethesda released Fallout 76, the newest online game in the Fallout series. Given the developer’s history, it’s hardly surprising that it launched in a disheveled state.

In case anyone thinks I’m being mean, I’m not saying that just to be cynical — well, not entirely. Bethesda’s RPGs always launch with a multitude of bugs and glitches, as if the company provides little-to-no Quality Assurance testing before releasing them onto the market. That is, assuming they don’t genuinely feel the players who purchase it are the QA testers. But this was taken to a new level with Fallout 76, a game glitchy to the point that Bethesda had to flat-out warn prospective players of how messy it would be through a statement posted on Twitter. It was clear that players would be in for a wild ride with the game, whether they knew it in advance or not.

Even considering that, many of them severely underestimated just how turbulent the ride would be. The game is loaded with stuttering and freezing issues on every platform, and random crashing and audio issues aren’t uncommon. This is in addition to several fans having issues with some gameplay concepts, like the lack of NPCs (one of the hallmarks of a Fallout game) and the VATS battle system feature not working as well for real-time encounters. It says a lot about its early reception when the game was already discounted at several retailers.

You’ll notice that the microtransactions store is one of the few aspects that’s been unaffected by any of the glitches. They have their priorities straight.

Bethesda had been noticeably silent about the game and its status since launch, outside of advertising it on social media. But they finally broke their silence through a post on the game’s Subreddit, to inform the community of how their silence didn’t mean they weren’t doing anything with the game behind the scenes. This was important to acknowledge given how many companies tend to throw in the towel after their products receive overwhelmingly bad receptions. They plan to keep regular contact with the community from here on, likely on a weekly basis.

Minor fixes and alterations are coming to 76 on December 4th, next Tuesday. These will include increasing player stash limits from 400 to 600, making the bosses drop more loot depending on the difficulty level, and creating better respawn spots. Given the state of the game, this is only the beginning.

As if there aren’t enough issues for Bethesda to fix, they’re also being sued over their refunding policy. Upon closer inspection, it appears that lawyers are trying to discover precisely what their refund policy is; that the company hasn’t been up front about this is a bad look for a game released in this state. Some fans believe this is the reason why it wasn’t released on Steam, which grants generous refunds if purchasers return it after a short timeframe. Console owners don’t have this option at all, especially as several stores have changed their policies to combat purchasers who abused them for a free game rental service. You shouldn’t destroy a GameStop over them, though.

There are also issues for those who purchased the Power Armor Edition on PC, which came with a cardboard cutout of a disc instead of the actual thing that has to be seen to be believed. This one isn’t getting as much attention as the other issues, and I almost missed it for this post; but it’s too ridiculous not to highlight.

There’s also another issue regarding the duffel bag included with the whopping $200 Collector’s Edition, though it’s minor compared to those above. It was (and is still being) advertised in pictures as being a nice military-style canvas bag, but it actually includes a considerably cheaper nylon one. Bethesda’s customer service admitted that this was changed due to cost issues, but didn’t inform anyone of this before its release. In addition to an apology, they’re giving anyone affected by this 500 in-game Atoms. As a final bit of humor here, that’s not quite enough to afford an in-game canvas bag.

Yes, Fallout 76 is a mess, and not everyone playing it is in the crowd that finds it bad that they can’t stop seeing what’s next. But don’t count it out just yet. There’s a history of companies turning products that launched poorly around, with the biggest in recent memory being Final Fantasy XIV, which Square Enix successfully relaunched as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Bethesda absolutely has the resources to provide this kind of transformation, but it will take a while considering its current state. Despite a beta session being held before release, it couldn’t be clearer that the final product is the real beta.

Bethesda wants to have an always-online game with microtransactions that uses one of their biggest properties around for a constant revenue source, so they will try to salvage it. But in the process, they should provide big rewards for those who paid to beta test it — those who haven’t sold the game. Given how they’ve been with rewards thus far, they should think about this carefully, because they can’t afford to botch this any further.

Fallout 76’s pitiful launch won’t tank Bethesda’s overall reputation with the gaming community too far, since several of them will line up to purchase Starfield and the next Elder Scrolls game when they release — likely on next-generation consoles. Many of them lined up to purchase Fallout 4 on day-one despite the glitchy states their previous games launched in — though 76 admittedly takes this to unseen levels. The company is not infallible, and they could find themselves in dire straits if they have even one more launch like this.