Fallout’s Most Atrocious Launch Became Todd Howard and Bethesda’s Ultimate Lesson in How Not to Release a Game

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Fallout’s Most Atrocious Launch Became Todd Howard and Bethesda’s Ultimate Lesson in How Not to Release a Game

When Fallout 76 came out in 2018, it was one of the most disastrous launches we’d ever seen. For what was one of the biggest franchises in gaming, Todd Howard and Bethesda really dropped the ball. But you know what the studio did after that? The devs locked in, dedicated to improvement, and seven years later, Fallout 76 is one of the most played games of the franchise.

Three years after the game’s launch, Bethesda officials reflected on its launch and the steps taken to improve it. In 2025, it’s been seven years, and the game that was once the punchline of a joke has become an example of how a game and the studio that made it can redeem themselves.

Todd Howard and Bethesda brought back Fallout 76 from the brink

Design director Mark Tucker was among those who acknowledged the game’s disastrous launch. Back in 2021, he talked about the entire thing in an interview with

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. “I’m not going to shy away from the fact that our launch was rough,” Tucker admitted. Having spent years making the game, he felt the sting of backlash personally.

There’s a lot of lessons we learned, both good and bad, and looking back there’s definitely some things we would have done a little differently… That said, the beauty of working on a game like this is we can evolve and adapt over time, and that’s something that, as a developer, is really rewarding.

But instead of being defensive over the backlash or crumbling, Tucker and his team used the negative feedback as motivation to make improvements to Fallout 76. And after seven years, the team at Bethesda has succeeded in turning it into something the community could finally embrace.

Over the years, Fallout 76 has received many updates, and the developers at Bethesda have shown just how committed they are to improving it with each one. Today, we can barely recognize the game’s current state compared to how it launched.

Looking at Fallout 76 now compared to what it was three years ago – it’s a pretty different game, and something I’m exceptionally proud to be a part of. It wasn’t meeting fan expectations, but the cool thing is that we now had a chance to make it better.

One major turning point for Fallout 76 was its arrival on Xbox Game Pass in July 2020. In recent years, Xbox Game Pass has become the most value-for-money gaming subscription and has brought millions of players to games on the platform. Considering its current success, we can only imagine what the game would’ve looked like if it had been on Game Pass at launch.

Community support goes a long way in a game’s life

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Todd Howard, the director of Bethesda Game Studios, also reflected on the game’s release back in 2021. “There was very little we didn’t ****** up,” he said. The studio had attempted to do something new, taking the single-player experience of Fallout into an MMO-like world, but as we know, it turned out to be nothing they expected.

The game had glitchy servers, buggy systems, and missing features, among other issues. Overall, Fallout 76 fell short of the studio’s usual standards. Bethesda’s reputation took a hit, but the studio’s willingness to own mistakes and dedication to improving the game has paid off.

Today, Fallout 76 is one of the most played games on Xbox and has been one of the biggest comeback stories in gaming history. Its disastrous launch will never be forgotten because it became a rallying point for Bethesda’s growth.