Published , by Josh Hawkins
Published , by Josh Hawkins
Yes, you read that correctly. In a shocking twist of events, Bethesda has introduced a brand-new premium subscription to Fallout 76, one of the most meme-worthy games that has released in the past few years. Starting out in a rough patch, Fallout 76 has evolved quite a bit since launch and it looks like Bethesda is happy enough with the progress to introduce a subscription service with tons of features locked behind the paywall.
The new service, called "Fallout 1st", comes at the cost of just $12.99 a month. What does it involve exactly? Well, subscribing to the new service will grant you access to private worlds, the Scrapbox, a new survival tent, a monthly allotment of Atoms, a new Ranger Armor outfit, and some unique icons and emotes. You can also pick up the service for $99.99 a year, if you prefer to pay in one big single payment.
For a little context, The price of Fallout 1st costs more than Xbox Game Pass (currently available for $9.99 a month) , which includes over 100 games, including Obsidian Entertainment's newest title, The Outer Worlds, as well as Fallout: New Vegas, which is highly regarded as one of the best Fallout games ever released. On top of that, you can get several other online services for the same price as Fallout 1st, including Netflix, Hulu without ads, or even Amazon Prime. So, if you're really looking for somewhere to sink your hard-earned cash that probably won't leave you disappointed in your decision, there are far better options out there. There's no mistaking that a premium subscription for a game like Fallout 76 is a very weird move. The title has never been that popular, having launched with a mass of bugs and broken features (moreso than your typical Fallout game launches with).
Even Bill Lavoy, who has probably logged more hours in Fallout 4 than I care to imagine, couldn't stomach much of Fallout 76, writing in his review that:
"Fallout 76 is a bit of a disaster, which is a shame because there are good ideas and good bits of content here. There wasn’t a single play session where I didn’t have a lot of fun, but there also wasn’t a session where something ridiculous didn’t cause frustration. It feels like it should have been released into early access as a work in progress for the next several months, thus alleviating some of the frustration from poor performance, bugs, and balancing issues. However, Bethesda opted to release Fallout 76 in a broken state, and this time I’m not laughing along about the bugs simply because we’ve come to accept them as a part of the Fallout franchise. How does Fallout 4 look infinitely better than Fallout 76, with the former coming out in 2015, more than three years ago? Fallout 76 is a decent game, but all the good is being crushed by the plethora of problems that just shouldn’t be problems."
We're not exactly sure what Bethesda is thinking this time around, but it will be intriguing to see how all of this plays out in the end. Do you still play Fallout 76 regularly? How do you feel about this recent change? Share your thoughts in the comments below, we'd love to hear what you're thinking.