Todd Howard has spoken frankly about an interesting design decision that Bethesda has made with Fallout 76.
Todd had a new interview with MrMattyPlays over the weekend. This interview comes weeks after the success of the Amazon Fallout TV show revived interest across their games, including Fallout 76. It also comes one week after this year’s Xbox Games Showcase, where they revealed the latest map expansion, to Skyline Valley in the Appalachian region.
Bethesda started using a monetization that the industry had started to get normalized to, thanks to free to play games like Fortnite, but they were still quite new to. They have several in-game currencies, with five of them considered major. One of those major currencies, Atoms, can be bought with real life currency. Many multiplatform multiplayer games like Fortnite use multiple currencies so that players who aren’t willing to pay more can earn in-game items by just playing the game.
At the flip side to this is the subscription. At $ 13 a month or $ 100 a year, some players are paying extra to get more enjoyment out of Fallout 76. Once again, this is a convention that was started by other games, and Bethesda is simply following their lead.
The Fallout 1st subscription does get you very plum bonuses like unlimited storage, and a monthly stipend for Atoms. As with other games that use this system, these are very good rewards for when you’re playing. Whether they are worth the investment really depends on if you play the game long enough to make it worthwhile.
Matty asked Todd about adding even more monetization to the game, by charging for their new season content, such as Skyline Valley. Here’s what Todd had to say:
“The good news is is that the other things you talked about, like the Atomic shop, Fallout first, the seasons and rank ups and all of these things, that are there. And I know like that kind of you see it in games sometimes, that those types of monetization, you know they get a negative reaction.
But the one thing they do allow us to do is do these big expansions and give them to everybody for free. And so I think there’s a debate there and like, what is the right approach? I will say that approach is working awesome uh for 76.
And we got a really really healthy community around the game. And that when we’re able to drop, like a Skyline Valley, because it is an online game, you want the community, everybody is experiencing that together.”
Skyline Valley is Fallout 76’s 19th expansion. As Todd has pointed out, it’s been a very successful model for them. In spite of the controversy about the game’s poor launch, they were able to engage enough loyal players to keep going. Today, with the success of the game on its own, paired with a new batch of players coming in after the Fallout TV show, they could make these expansions free for everyone. And that seems to be Fallout 76’s immediate future.
