Bethesda has responded to player's accusations of broken mechanics associated with Fallout 76's new service. Fallout 76's premium membership plan, which was announced earlier this week as Fallout 1st, costs players either $99.99 for a full year's subscription or $12.99 per month and is supposed to allow access to things which fans of the series have been asking for since the game's initial launch in November 2018, as well as a small splash of extra content like the Obsidian Entertainment-themed Fallout: New Vegas desert ranger armor.
Unfortunately, Fallout 76 players were not pleased when asked to pay more than a basic Netflix subscription for quality-of-life improvements which were promised months ago. Bethesda also did not purchase the domain name Fallout First, which angry fans have since turned into a NSFW vulgarity-filled rant against the company. Now, in a disappointing turn of events, it seems like even the promised services of private worlds and unlimited scrap containers aren't working the way they are supposed to.
According to Polygon, many players reporting the private worlds which are featured as the top selling point of Fallout 1st are not, in fact, private, instead allowing anyone on the player's friend list to jump in at any time with no way to block them. Even worse, it seems like some players are also losing all of the scrap they place inside the Fallout 1st "unlimited container" Scrap Box, with no way for players to get those items back. Although Bethesda at first thought this was simply a menu issue, it now appears even they aren't sure where the items went.
A Bethesda representative spoke to Polygon about the issues, stating an update to the private world settings would be coming soon which will allow players to control access to their private servers. The representative also admitted they had found "a small number of players" had indeed lost their scrap items once placing them in the unlimited container, but said "Resolving this issue is currently our top priority," adding "We are also exploring ways to restore the missing items."
While it's nice to see Bethesda has heard player's complaints about this new service and are working to resolve it, one can't help but wonder why something as simple as access controls weren't included in the private server's functionality in the first place. Hopefully those players who lost their scrap will be able to have it returned soon, and it will be interesting to see how Bethesda deals with any other future problems which may arise from Fallout 76's premium membership, which so far is undeniably off to a pretty bad start.
Source: Polygon