Bethesda was surprised how uninterested players were in Fallout 76's PvP

(Image credit: Bethesda)

While plenty of Fallout players have suggested over the years that future games in the series could do with an option for co-op multiplayer, the addition of player-vs-player combat in Fallout 76 was not met with enthusiasm. Although not much about Fallout 76 was.

As Bethesda's senior vice president of global marketing and communications Pete Hines told USGamer, "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," Hines said.

Hines went on to explain that the Wastelanders expansion coming to Fallout 76 in April is only the start of the changes, suggesting a reinvention comparable to what was achieved with The Elder Scrolls Online. "We're going down this path. 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 recently saw 17 minutes of Wastelanders gameplay, complete with NPCs. Here's everything we know about Fallout 76 Wastelanders.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.