Player claims Fallout 1st domain to protest Fallout 76's subscription

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The Fallout 1st URL was the first to fall.

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Yesterday, Bethesda boldly announced that their much-maligned MMO spinoff Fallout 76 was getting an optional subscription service named Fallout 1st. To say that this went down poorly with the game's community is a massive understatement. One particularly salty player even snapped up FalloutFirst.com. What they did with it wasn't pretty.

It has since been taken down (perhaps devoured by a pack of hungry lawyers), but in the few hours that it was alive it was wall to wall invective, ripping into the shortcomings of the subscription. Fortunately for us, nothing on the internet truly dies, so we can still view the page via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Do be warned that there's more than a little bit of foul language here.

Even as a semi regular player of two subscription games (Final Fantasy XIV and The Elder Scrolls Online), it's easy to see why players were less than happy with the service Bethesda are advertising. It simply offers very little for a massively steep price. Private server instances are useful, but the tent, scrap box and currency for buying cosmetic outfits feel downright miserly. It's even more galling when you compare it to The Elder Scrolls Online's cheaper optional subscription, which at least gets you access to all the game's many minor DLC packs.

Unless Bethesda improve what they're offering, I doubt this'll be the last we'll have heard of the Fallout 76 Sex Tent. If nothing else, we're witnessing the birth of a wonderful, terrible meme.

Dominic Tarason
Dominic Tarason
Contributing Writer

The product of a wasted youth, wasted prime and getting into wasted middle age, Dominic Tarason is a freelance writer, occasional indie PR guy and professional techno-hermit seen in many strange corners of the internet and seldom in reality. Based deep in the Welsh hinterlands where no food delivery dares to go, videogames provide a gritty, realistic escape from the idyllic views and fresh country air. If you're looking for something new and potentially very weird to play, feel free to poke him on Bluesky. He's almost sociable, most of the time.