Bethesda plans to keep Fallout 76 supported indefinitely with Pete Hines saying the game will last “forever.”
Metro spoke to Hines, the vice president of global marketing and communications at Bethesda, and asked him about the new Fallout game, specifically regarding how long the developers planned to keep it aloft in the games as a service environment that the game appears to fall into. Hines unironically responded by saying “forever” before explaining why he’s not kidding about the timeframe and referencing other long-standing Bethesda hits like Skyrim.
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“I’m not being ironic. Like, forever,” Hines reiterated to Metro. “Because other people have said, ‘Is your timeline two years or five years?’ And I said, ‘Well, they’re still playing Morrowind and you go online and look at how many people are playing Fallout 4 and Skyrim. Those games have been out for four and seven years, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people playing those games every single day, every single month.’”
Hines’ stance on Fallout 76 lasting forever may seem like a bold one, but it’s not so unbelievable when you consider Skyrim as an example of Bethesda’s games’ longevity. As he pointed out, people are still playing Skyrim through different versions on a variety of platforms, versions that he’s said Bethesda will stop releasing once people stop buying them. Looking ahead beyond Skyrim and onto Fallout 76, a similar lifespan appears to be in Bethesda’s plans with Hines saying that the game’s “timeline is in perpetuity.”
As for the content the Fallout 76 will get to keep the game running though, Hines said Bethesda isn’t sure what it’ll look like yet. He said that Bethesda plans on seeing how players respond to the content in Fallout 76 and referenced Fallout 3’s ending-removing DLC as an example of how Bethesda will adapt to players’ requests and concerns.
“The big consumer reaction when we launched that game was that they were all upset that it had an ending. And we were like, ‘All the previous games had an ending! We thought we were sticking to what that franchise is…’ But they didn’t want an ending and we had a couple of DLCs in the works but the third one we did we were like, ‘Well, we need a DLC that removes the ending of the game and allows you to continue on.’ So 76 is going to be like that. We have some ideas for this and that, but let’s see what people want more of. Let’s see what they respond to and support that.”
Fallout 76 releases on Nov. 14 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
