Fallout 76 » Discussions


Fallout 76 will NOT be on Steam

Tags: #News 
  • Officer
    August 7, 2018

    It's been confirmed by Pete Hines that Fallout 76 will not be on Steam, or at least not at launch. 

    Intead the game will exclusively be on the Bethesda.Net platform so far as PC players are concerned.

    Is this a big issue for you, perhaps even a deal-breaker? As a console player (XBoxOne or PS4, haven't decided yet) I'm not personally affected. But I'm curious to see how PC users feel about this.

     

  • August 7, 2018

    Hmm, I think it's largely going to depend on how well they work in the friends/connectivity systems. The better Bethesda does with that the less it matters, to the point where I could see it being better than releasing on steam.

    The main issue I think is actually going to be for Bethesda. When I think of Steam I think of one of, if not the best seller of video games. The number of users they have, and more importantly...the amount of money most people spend on Steam is sort of ridiculous. Because if your an avid PC Gamer, then you can very easily go into a summer sale or winter sale and by dozens of games, with the intent of only playing 1 or 2. Bethesda's missing out on that crazy market, and I think that could very well cost them for PC users who can be a bit pickier than us PS4/Xbox users who either by the real copy (heh) or from one source. 

    So yeah, I think the major issue is going to be seeing how the lack of Steam is going to effect how many people casually buy the game...Because most people who already want the game probably won't care too much, but Steam works best when the game's 60% and people decide to randomly pick it up. That's the main area that Bethesda's going to lose out here...

  • Leader
    August 8, 2018

    OK, so, I caught this yesterday too and as a Steam ZOS player, I honestly think this is probably a wise decision on their part and makes sense for launch. While the Fallout 76 servers will be configured differently, we can only sort of look at the history of the game that came before to give us some insight on why this decision might have been made. There has been a continual issue where players who purchased ESO through Steam, OR have linked their accounts to Steam, will get booted from the server and will then be unable to connect or relog for hours on end. It always seems to happen at the worst times--namely holidays when people have free time and want to play or during events. This server connectivity issue doesn't effect people who outright just bought the PC version directly from Bethesda, and those folks can access the server fine when Steam users cannot. So the issue lies with how Steam accounts connect with the ZOS servers--it could be a capacity issue, it could be something else, we don't really know too much about the cause, just that it keeps cropping up.

    I know it pisses off a lot of people when it happens, myself included, and it always seems to happen at the worst times. People have tried to find work arounds like downloading the ESO client directly from ZOS, but oddly enough your account information does not transfer, even though you can play with those same people in game. 

    There is a weird loophole--if you joined before One Tam/October 2016, you can tell Steam to ignore a certain file and that seems to allow you to run it and connect to the server. I'm not sure why or how the servers handled accounts differently after that update, but the main takeaway is that users can't connect to the server and ZOS account info can't be transferred away from Steam because the two accounts become linked when you sign up and it creates a dependency on both working. Steam working or not working is out of ZOS' control, and it must be maddening that their customer base gets pissed at them when the issue pretty clearly seems to be with Steam, yet Steam catches no flak for it.

    So as far as I can see, I think it's the right PR call for launch, despite the few grumblings in comments of that article. I think that's a sound judgment on their part to ensure maximum up time for all PC players. I mean, for them, the more audiences they can reach and sell their game to, the better off they are. I'm sure this decision wasn't made lightly and that they'd like to be able to sell it through Steam. Maybe if/when they sort out those issues, it will be available through Steam. Sort of sucks that it just can't work with Steam as it should, but all things considered I think it's the right call for launch.