A recent series of rumours have forced Bethesda to confirm that Fallout 76 won’t be going free-to-play.
An unidentified individual claiming to be close to Australian video game retailer EB Games stated that Bethesda was recalling copies of Fallout 76. The belief at the time was that they may be doing this in order to prepare for a “free-to-play” announcement and prevent more people from buying the premium copies of the game. Multiple sites reported on this rumour, but none were able to verify it.
Now, Bethesda has responded to a fan on Twitter who stated they want their money back if Fallout 76 goes free-to-play. The Bethesda Twitter account replied that “There is no truth to this rumor.” They have not expanded upon that reply anywhere else at this time.
While a Twitter reply may not be the most formal of ways to address these rumours, the fact that Bethesda bothered to go on record in any format to shoot these reports down seems to say a lot. Many companies fall back on the old “we do not address rumours and speculation” line in situations such as these. Bethesda choosing to instead tackle these rumours head-on would seem to indicate that there really are no plans in place to turn Fallout 76 into a free-to-play game.
Of course, these rumours were only easy to believe in the first place because of how bad Fallout 76‘s first few months have been. Even if we look past things like that whole special edition canvas bag fiasco, you’re still left with a game that is buggy, lacking in content, and filled with ideas that seemingly betray the Fallout lore and the spirit of the original RPGs in the series.
Considering that the most exciting thing to come out of Fallout 76 since its launch is that hidden developer room that contains unreleased items, we honestly wouldn’t have been all that surprised to learn that the game is going free-to-play. For the moment, though, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
We’ll keep you furnished with Fallout 76 news as it happens.