Fallout 76 Trouble Continues With Low UK Sales; Massive Update To Address Lingering Problems
It's been a rough first week for Bethesda's new entry in the Fallout series. Fallout 76 launched to a mostly negative reception. We reported on the game's launch day that it had received hundreds of negative reviews on Metacritic. The game has since received a total of 2,363 negative reviews on Metacritic, and I also criticized the game in an op-ed.
It appears that the game's negative reception isn't constrained to just written reviews, however, as a new report indicates that Fallout 76 sold 82.4% fewer copies in the UK during its first week than Fallout 4. We don't have any sales numbers for the US, but it is likely that the game is trailing its predecessor in sales here as well.
In an attempt to address some of the numerous glitches and problems gamers have experienced, Bethesda released another patch today that is reportedly 53GB in size on PS4. This update is almost the same size as the 54GB Day One patch that Bethesda released last week, which was in turn larger than the base game itself. At least some of the pre-existing files are overwritten by this patch, but Fallout 76's footprint on your system's hard drive is still massive. On the PC, this update is reportedly much smaller, weighing in at just 15GB, but the game's file size is still undeniably huge. These huge updates must also be causing havoc for those that have a data cap on their home internet connection.
The update notes for this patch indicate that it should improve the game's performance and overall stability as well as addressing a large number of bugs. Several bugs in the PVP system have been fixed. One particularly bothersome bug continued to mark players as hostile to each other even after a PVP battle had been completed. Now, after a player dies in a PVP fight, they no longer are viewed as hostile.
Another problematic bug would caused items to return to a broken state after being repaired, forcing you to attempt to repair them over again. This was also fixed in the new update.
Unfortunately it doesn't appear that one of the most serious issues has been fixed yet though. A recent cheat has made it significantly easier for users to launch nukes in Fallout 76, something that is supposed to be a rare occurrence. This problem became more significant yesterday when players worked together to launch all three nukes that appear in the game at the same location simultaneously. This caused Bethesda's Fallout 76 servers to crash.
Instead of fixing this issue, it will likely just get worse. In order to launch the nukes, users had to first kill Scorched Officers and Ghouls to find part launch codes for the nukes, but they apparently didn't always appear correctly. Bethesda has reportedly fixed this issue, so it just became all that much easier for users to nuke the world of Fallout over again.
For those that are still roaming the Appalachian wasteland, hopefully the server's will be able to handle this extra strain.
It appears that the game's negative reception isn't constrained to just written reviews, however, as a new report indicates that Fallout 76 sold 82.4% fewer copies in the UK during its first week than Fallout 4. We don't have any sales numbers for the US, but it is likely that the game is trailing its predecessor in sales here as well.
In an attempt to address some of the numerous glitches and problems gamers have experienced, Bethesda released another patch today that is reportedly 53GB in size on PS4. This update is almost the same size as the 54GB Day One patch that Bethesda released last week, which was in turn larger than the base game itself. At least some of the pre-existing files are overwritten by this patch, but Fallout 76's footprint on your system's hard drive is still massive. On the PC, this update is reportedly much smaller, weighing in at just 15GB, but the game's file size is still undeniably huge. These huge updates must also be causing havoc for those that have a data cap on their home internet connection.
The update notes for this patch indicate that it should improve the game's performance and overall stability as well as addressing a large number of bugs. Several bugs in the PVP system have been fixed. One particularly bothersome bug continued to mark players as hostile to each other even after a PVP battle had been completed. Now, after a player dies in a PVP fight, they no longer are viewed as hostile.
Another problematic bug would caused items to return to a broken state after being repaired, forcing you to attempt to repair them over again. This was also fixed in the new update.
Unfortunately it doesn't appear that one of the most serious issues has been fixed yet though. A recent cheat has made it significantly easier for users to launch nukes in Fallout 76, something that is supposed to be a rare occurrence. This problem became more significant yesterday when players worked together to launch all three nukes that appear in the game at the same location simultaneously. This caused Bethesda's Fallout 76 servers to crash.
Instead of fixing this issue, it will likely just get worse. In order to launch the nukes, users had to first kill Scorched Officers and Ghouls to find part launch codes for the nukes, but they apparently didn't always appear correctly. Bethesda has reportedly fixed this issue, so it just became all that much easier for users to nuke the world of Fallout over again.
For those that are still roaming the Appalachian wasteland, hopefully the server's will be able to handle this extra strain.
