Fallout 76 Got Better? Ratings on Steam are Positive

When Fallout 76 debuted in 2018, it seemed that the game would not last long. Subsequent reports of numerous problems (not only with the game itself) and huge discounts reassured fans of the title's failure. Despite this, itseems to have regained the trust of players - at least partially.

Both the latest and all reviews of the online installment of Fallout on Steam are "mostly positive" (75% and 76% respectively). In mid-April 2020, only 67% of users were willing to give the game a good review, and that was already a significant improvement over the initial reception of F76 on Steam following its April 14 debut.

Keep in mind that the game's release available on that platform was a revised version, so to speak - only after the debut of the then-current update to Fallout 76 was updated with such elements as NPCs and new quests. In addition, the creators removed a lot of bugs and significantly improved the optimization.

It should also be noted that the majority of positive reviews appeared in November 2020, when the Steel Dawn update was released .

Fallout 76 has thousands of players on Steam

Of course, ratings alone mean little if there are barely a handful of players in the game. Marvel's Avengers also collects better reviews in recent weeks, except that at the best time the number of players barely exceeds a thousand.

As it turns out, Bethesda has nothing to be ashamed of in this regard either. At the time of writing Fallout 76 is being played by about 6 thousand players, and at today's peak activity there were 9.5 thousand users. In recent months, it even happened that more than 15 thousand users were playing the title at the same time (via Steam Charts). It's not a score on par with Steam's biggest hits (or even Fallout 4), but it's still a huge success for a game that at one point was bundled with used controllers, gamepad overlays and hard drives.

That's not to say that Fallout 76 is garnering only praise. Even those users who think the title performs much better than at launch (even that on Steam) have a lot to say about the game. The most common complaints are about the Fallout 1st subscription, effectively a paywall for accessing such features as unlimited storage space for content, as well as private worlds (i.e. servers). The latter were the reason for the recent wave of negative reviews around September 7, as can be seen from the ratings chart on Steam.

A fly(er) in the ointment

The players are less unanimous about other elements of F76, such as the fundamental departure from survival mechanics to "social game" (which some have even compared to the Animal Crossing series), the gameplay balance (although, as someone said, "breaking" things is standard for the series) and the interesting/boring story quests.

There are, of course, complaints about bugs, poor optimization, and cheaters spoiling the fun, but it's hard to say if these are really common problems (i.e. more visible than in typical online games) or if this is a case of a "loud minority".

Anyway, after three years Fallout 76 performs much better than it did at the time of its fateful 2018 release. Does that mean it's "good"? That's a different question. Let's recall that the title was discounted as part of the Winter Sale of Steam and can currently be purchased for around $10.