Bethesda Blows Off Steam With 'Fallout 76'

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Bethesda is ready to blow off Steam. According to an FAQ page for Fallout 76, the next entry in its sci-fi RPG series, the game's beta and full release will be distributed via the Bethesda website, but not on Steam. The game's pre-order page also allows you to select Best Buy, Amazon, GameStop and Walmart as your retailer if you're in the U.S. and playing on PC; different retailers are listed based on location and platform.

Steam really has been the platform of choice for Bethesda over the last few years. Major titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Bethesda-published games like the Dishonored series have all been distributed through the Valve platform. It's possible the company is looking to determine whether or not it needs Steam to reach most of its audience, or if people will be content to purchase its games without involving Valve.

One possible motivation behind ditching Steam could simply be that Bethesda doesn't want to give Valve a cut of Fallout 76's earnings. Publishers often avoid established platforms, like Epic Games recently did with the Android version of Fortnite, because they don't want to participate in revenue sharing programs. But the decision to sell the PC version of the game via retailers like Best Buy and Walmart undermines that theory.

It's worth noting that Bethesda could decide to bring Fallout 76 to PC gamers via Steam, GOG and other platforms when the game is ready to officially debut. The company said on the FAQ page that any of the information it contains is "subject to change without notice." So if the game's audience negatively reacts to not being able to buy via Steam, Bethesda could end up bringing Fallout 76 to the platform.

Fallout 76's beta is expected to launch at "a later date." Bethesda said on its FAQ page that if everything goes according to plan, the beta version of the game will become the full version at launch, allowing those who helped fine tune the game to keep their progress between versions. The game is set to debut on November 14. But considering that seemingly every major release has been delayed this year, we'll believe it when we see it.

Nathaniel Mott
Nathaniel Mott
Freelance News & Features Writer

Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.

14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jimmysmitty
    Most gamers like the idea of having a ingle platform to hold all their games. There are those that may dislike Steam but the convenience of having access to every game you purchase in a single place without having to worry about where the game disk or game product key is is a huge boon to PC gaming.

    Then to add on top there is the community which allows for people to easily communicate, rate or share information about the game its another plus.

    Steam can still improve but I think its still the best option. I purchase all my games through it. The last game I bought non Steam was Diablo 3 because, well Blizzard has never used Steam and probably never will.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    ...the next entry in its sci-fi RPG series...
    From what I can gather, Fallout 76 looks more like a multiplayer focused action survival game set in the Fallout universe. Something tells me that it's not going to be the kind of Fallout game that many people are expecting from the series. As for why they want it on their own platform, supposedly they're intending to make heavy use of microtransactions as a source of continued revenue, and they would rather not share the profit from that with anyone.
    Reply
  • DrakeFS
    Does 76 have a monthly subscription fee? Will it be microtransaction heavy? If either are true, then steam would try to get a cut of the sells after the game has been paid for for as well. Where as the brick & motar stores would not. So it seems more likely, to me, that they do not want to share revenue beyond the initial purchase.
    Reply
  • JeffreyQC
    Goodbye Fallout 76 !
    Reply
  • ubercake
    I'm not sure if I'd play another Fallout game, but I would much rather buy software directly from the publisher or retailer/e-tailer and run software without a 3rd-party client always sitting out there in the background.
    Reply
  • mac_angel
    one thing that they are probably missing, along with a lot of others that question if Steam is worth it, is the community. Steam has a HUGE community, and though Steam doesn't so much offer support for the games, you can find many forums in Steam if you have a problem. Sometimes it's a bug that needs a lot of attention before addressed, but other times it's something that can be fixed by tweaking something, reverting drivers, etc. A lot of times when I have a problem with a game and Google it, some of the top hits are from Steam forums.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    tbh i dont like steam.

    i sue it, but I would rather have GOG version than a steam version.
    Reply
  • mihen
    If it has in-game purchases, then steam does not handle this well. So it could be for that reason.
    Reply
  • aTomek
    Fallout 4 was my last game I play from Bethesda. The amount of bugs is incredible, it broke the questline several times during my play. They never attempted to fix them, although most of them are described in FO4 wiki. They are as greedy as EA, it is obvious why they've dropped Steam.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    21213048 said:
    tbh i dont like steam.

    i sue it, but I would rather have GOG version than a steam version.

    GOG is just Steam minus the DRM. If they were to have a browser like Steam it would make them vastly better. The biggest benefit Steam creates is the ability for someone to have a list of all games owned and download/install them whenever without worry of losing the disk or key.

    21213449 said:
    Fallout 4 was my last game I play from Bethesda. The amount of bugs is incredible, it broke the questline several times during my play. They never attempted to fix them, although most of them are described in FO4 wiki. They are as greedy as EA, it is obvious why they've dropped Steam.

    Bethesda does have a very buggy game engine. However my belief is that the biggest reason why they don't fix it is because of the mod community. Whenever they patch a game most mods have to be re-compiled for the new version. And the mod community for Bethesda is huge. The Elder Scrolls is probably one of the largest modded games out there.

    And are you saying Steam is as greedy as EA? That would be a MASSIVE stretch. If a company uses Steam then their product is hosted on Steams servers and if they use Steamworks then they have a built in DRM and can forego most third party DRMs (although most decide to have another on top of Steam). Its understandable Steam would charge for these services to distribute these games. Its not cheap to have server farms to hold data or bandwidth to be able to deliver these products to people.

    Reply