This past weekend, more players than ever played Bethesda’s MMO Fallout 76 on Steam. And the other games in the series are also enjoying new popularity. After all, thanks to the series from Amazon, everyone is talking about it again.
What’s Fallout 76 all about? The MMO offshoot of the popular Fallout series was released in 2018 and received a mixed reception from the specialist press. On Metacritic today the game has a score of 52, based on 49 reviews. The developers felt like the “villains of the Internet.”
The users weren’t particularly impressed either. When it was released, the open world was completely deserted, except for the other players. Over the years, Bethesda improved the game and promoted it – but the MMO didn’t really take off.
Last weekend, Fallout 76 set a new record. On Steam there were more players than ever before in the wasteland of the online branch.
Everything you need to know about Fallout 76 – in 2 minutes
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39,455 players on Steam alone
What happened over the weekend? According to SteamDB, Fallout 76 achieved record player numbers over the weekend. A total of 39,455 people were playing the game on Steam at the same time – more than ever before.
The reason for the sudden increase seems obvious: Amazon’s Fallout series was released just two days before the weekend.
It received good reviews and also convinced MeinMMO author Christoph Waldboth. The fans of the video game template also apparently got interested in the post-apocalypse again and quickly started Fallout 76.
Around 11,000 players soon became over 39,000 on April 11th. An important role is probably played by the fact that the game can currently be played for free on Steam until April 18th.
If you want to keep Fallout 67 permanently, you should check out Prime Gaming – it is currently available there for free too.
Have you only played Fallout 76? Other titles in the Fallout series have also benefited from the sudden popularity of the Amazon series. Fallout 4 had more than 83,000 players over the weekend, compared to 24,000 a week earlier.
Fallout 3 had an increase from about 1,000 players to 6,700. And even the original 2D games in the series are enjoying new popularity. Fallout 1 had 2,300 players online at once, whereas before it had fewer than 300.
Here you can see the player development of Fallout New Vegas, 4 and 76 (via SteamDB/x):
This shows that the hype surrounding another medium can also rekindle enthusiasm for a video game. While Bethesda has struggled to attract more players to their MMO over the past few years, it has ultimately been a series that has succeeded.
Have you seen the series and are now checking out Fallout 76? Have you already been there at the weekend? Write it to us in the comments. Fallout 4 is about to get prettier thanks to a new update.