‘Fallout’ games get huge spike in players following success of TV show

A number of Fallout games have had a huge spike in players following the launch of Amazon Prime Video’s take on the franchise.

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All eight episodes of Fallout launched on the streamer last week (April 12) and the TV show has seemingly inspired a number of gamers to take to the world of Fallout.

Originally released in 2015, Fallout 4 reached a seven-year high of concurrent players on Steam this weekend, with over 83,000 players heading to The Commonwealth (via SteamDB). For the past few years, the game has seen between 20,000 and 30,000 players at any one time. As it stands, Fallout 4 is the 27th most played game on Steam.

Fallout 76 has also had its best ever weekend on Steam, with a peak of 39,455 concurrent players, while Fallout: New Vegas achieved a nine-year high of 19,505 concurrent players.

Compare here:

— SteamDB (@SteamDB) April 14, 2024

Bethesda has also made Fallout 76 free for Amazon Prime members following the launch of Fallout.

In a four-star review, NME wrote: “Unlike fellow post-apocalyptic shows The Last Of Us and The Walking Dead, Fallout is a dark comedy that finds laughter in ludicrously terrible situations. Director Jonathan Nolan (Westworld) shows a deft understanding of the source material throughout – peppering each episode with references to Bethesda’s beloved video game series.”

Taking full advantage of the attention, Bethesda recently confirmed the long-awaited “next-gen” update to Fallout 4 would be launching later this month. Due for release April 25, the update will include native console applications, performance mode and quality mode settings, as well as “stability improvements and fixes” for  Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 players. A new quest and a number of new items and cosmetics will also be made available to all players.

However, this new update has delayed the release of player-made mod Fallout: London, which had been due to release April 23. “With the new update dropping, the past four years of work stands to simply break,” explained project lead Dean Carter in a video update confirming the delay. “This really, really hurts us.”

The mod will launch as soon as a number of fixes are implemented. “We might get lucky and get a day one fix, or it might be a month from now.”

In other news, the ambitious Final Fantasy 7 Remake project is reportedly hoping to release the third part of the trilogy in 2027.