Fallout 76 has enjoyed a surge in popularity lately, but this renewed interest has come with a reminder that the game lacks cross-play and cross-progression. Bethesda’s Todd Howard has been pressed on the matter and, while he hasn’t promised anything, he’s said both features continue to be looked into.
Todd Howard made an appearance on the latest episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast (as spotted by Kotaku) to discuss the Fallout series in the wake of the successful Amazon live-action show. It’s been such a hit with audiences that it resulted in the Fallout games seeing a boost in player counts. Multiplayer-only entry Fallout 76, in particular, has benefited greatly, with its concurrent player count on Steam leaping from around 12,700 to over 70,000 in the wake of the show’s debut.
Unlike plenty of other multiplatform online multiplayer titles, Fallout 76 notably lacks cross-play functionality, meaning you can only play alongside those on the same platform as you. You’d think this would be something Bethesda would’ve added eventually, but it’s been nearly six years since Fallout 76‘s launch and there’s been no sign of it. So, it’s not surprising that Howard, who’s an executive producer on the game, has been asked about it again.
Unfortunately, there’s no button Bethesda can simply push to add cross-play, and while Howard said, “We keep looking into it,” he explained that Fallout 76 was never designed with the feature in mind. Howard added that they would love to incorporate cross-play, as well as cross-progression (in fact, he thinks the latter is far more important), but it sounds like it would be really difficult: “It’s something we are looking at but I will say it’s quite, you know, the way that [Fallout 76] was architected from the beginning… it’s quite a technical lift. Not saying we are or aren’t doing anything, we are looking at it and seeing where that’s going to impact people.”
It’s a shame neither feature is guaranteed to make it into Fallout 76, even with both of them becoming more commonplace in modern gaming. On the bright side, Bethesda keeps giving people reasons to come back to Fallout 76. As of April 30, the game has seen a rather hefty update that’s fixed a number of annoying bugs, including ones that prevented you from progressing certain quests. The Cremator weapon, which was unintentionally more powerful than it should’ve been, has also been adjusted, though Bethesda says it’s been buffed in other ways to balance it out. You can read the full patch notes for yourself on Bethesda’s website.
