Bethesda admits they misunderstood Fallout 76 audience

Bethesda has admitted that they misunderstood Fallout 76 players when creating the game’s online functionality. 

In an interview with USGamer, Bethesda senior vice president of global marketing and communications Pete Hines revealed that the company knows they misunderstood Fallout 76 players.

“Well, I mean at the end of the day, our intention was always, we’re going to put this out there, see what folks think, and then cater the stuff that we do later to their reaction,” Hines revealed.

“For example, I think we were a little surprised how few people wanted to take part in PvP and how many more they were interested in PvE together. As opposed to, ‘I want to test my mettle against you and let’s get into a duel.’ There’s some folks who do, don’t get me wrong, but I think it’s a smaller percentage of our player base than we thought.”

Part of Bethesda’s fix for misunderstanding their player bases wants and desires is the arrival of Fallout 76 Wastelanders, an expansion for the game that is aimed to feel more like Fallout.

“We’re going down this path [to fix the game],” Hines continued. “It’s not that we’re doing this and we’re done. They’ve done a lot of work on a systems level to make things possible in Wastelanders that they want to build on and use for more content that we’re going to be doing the rest of this year and into next year and beyond.

“We have a plan. We have a roadmap that we’ll be sharing before too long, probably after Wastelanders. Let’s get through Wastelanders and then talk about that.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Bethesda misunderstood Fallout 76 or even it’s playerbase in general. Since release, Bethesda has gone on to introduce a subscription service to the game that fans have been telling to F-off since it’s conception.

The company has also admitted that they were aware of the game’s unacceptable quality before the game’s release back in October 2018.