Fallout 1st Subscribers Are Being Bullied By Other Players

It turns out that there is a new, unexpected reason to opt out of Bethesda's controversial Fallout 1st subscription. Players who have chosen to pay the $12.99 per month or $100 for Fallout 1st are now easy targets for non-paying Fallout 76 members who aren't fond of Bethesda's latest announcement.

On the Fallout 76 subreddit, Fallout 1st subscribers have been reporting that they are being griefed, targeted and taken out by groups of players, as the paid service has unexpectedly created a kind of class struggle in post-apocalyptic Appalachia. Paying players have shared horror stories of being attacked by gangs in teddy bear suits and and malicious voice chat lines. Though, to be fair, some have pointed out that not every player is in the know about the controversy, and that there are probably some poor souls out there confused as to why they're suddenly getting so much hate over a dancing emote.

This isn't to mention all the "eat the rich" comments. There hasn't been a lot of pity online for those paying for Fallout 1st, with many instead seeming to revel in Bethesda's blunders. As one Redditor put it, "Wearing that ranger armor has got to be like putting a sign on that says 'I support Bethesda's bad decisions and pay them to abuse me' [...]" That Redditor later added, "Glad they got private servers then."

Fallout 1st, like Fallout 76, flopped hard upon launch. Players were bitter that features they have been asking for were placed behind a paywall–an insanely expensive one at that. Furthermore, it turns out that these perks weren't even working correctly. The Scrap Box with unlimited storage? It has been eating player's items. The private servers? Anyone on your friends list can access them without an invite. There has been a whole list of bugs reported on the Fallout 76 subreddit. Now, even the emotes and icons are dysfunctional in the sense that using them just might get you killed. 

Bethesda has reported that the company is looking into the aforementioned issues, but what exactly is Bethesda supposed to do about Fallout 1st members being targeted? Suggest that they hide their secret, VIP status? Build some kind of special gated community for Fallout 1st members, safe from non-paying marauders? Those who didn't seem to care about the bullying on the subreddit suggested that paying players just go back to their own private servers. Others say to just mute, block, and move on.

Maybe all this will blow over after a while. In the meantime, you should probably take pity on those paying players if you see one. They just want to pay money to make the game better, and and their subscriptions have yet to yield what they're paying for.

The announcement of the subscription service is a bold move from Bethesda to put it mildly, especially after a long-awaited free content update called Wastelanders was delayed. Wastelanders was supposed to make the world of Fallout 76 a little less empty and lonely by populating it with NPCs that players can talk to; you know, the kind of thing expected from a Fallout game. We shudder to think of the fallout from fans if Wastelanders had any sort of price tag attached. 

Players — including those who refused to play the title — see Fallout 76 as a failure on the part of Bethesda. The game didn't live up to the sky high expectations set at that fateful E3 presentation in 2018, and because of this, Fallout 76 is the lowest earning Fallout game in the franchise. Right now, Bethesda is likely trying to recoup its losses. But paid updates and services like Fallout 1st are, as one Redditor so eloquently put it, seen as Bethesda "trying to scrape up as much money from this super mutant corpse of a title through [its] paywall atom shop and subscription as [it] can." 

Bethesda should have been rewarding players for sticking around through the bugs, controversies, and bad reviews surrounding Fallout 76. Instead, the company seems focused on ways it can generate revenue from the few loyal fans that have stuck around. It is seriously not a good look. Really, the only thing that could possibly save the developer from this monumental PR disaster would be to drop some Elder Scrolls news.

Anything? Just a hint? Well, we tried. 

Anyway, good luck with this one, Bethesda. You're going to need it.