Image: Bethesda
The entire Fallout franchise is seeing an influx of players after the release of Amazon’s Fallout series.
Fallout 76 is popular again, a mere six years after its original release. According to Bethesda Game Studios, the multiplayer RPG saw over one million active players in a single day. This follows the release of Amazon’s live-action Fallout TV adaptation, which has apparently brought renewed interest to the post-apocalyptic game franchise.
Fallout 76 wasn’t the only game to enjoy a sudden influx of players, either. Bethesda announced that there were almost five million active players across the Fallout franchise in a single day.
Everyone’s playing Fallout 76 again
Fallout 76 is enjoying a triumphant comeback, a long six years after an infamous launch which saw players heavily criticise the game for its many bugs, glitches and gameplay issues. Bethesda has pushed multiple updates to the game over time to improve the player experience. In 2020, it finally gained some positive reception with the release of the Wastelanders expansion, which added human NPCs and more story quests to the game.
Well, all of those updates are really paying off now. Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout TV adaptation has reinvigorated interest in the franchise, with players flocking back to older games like Fallout 76 and Fallout: New Vegas to make the long wait for Season 2 a little more bearable.
Player numbers for every game in the franchise have been on the rise since the TV show was released, with even the very first Fallout game (1997) being affected. Fallout: New Vegas hit a peak of 36,423 concurrent players on Steam, while Fallout 4 saw 117,224 players in 24 hours on the platform. More players will likely hop back into the latter game when Bethesda drops its big next-gen update later today.
Amazon’s Fallout TV series is sending viewers back to the games for a reason: it’s a fantastic introduction to the universe of the games, and fits right into their ongoing timeline. The series connects back to multiple games in the franchise in unexpected ways, which is likely causing people to go back and play them to get the full story.