Considered doomed 6 years ago, Fallout 76 is attracting record player numbers thanks to the TV series

A row of post-apocalyptic soldiers — (Image credit: Bethesda)

Following the success of the Fallout TV adaptation, Fallout 76 has—perhaps inevitably—attracted a new audience, reaching over a million players in a single day according to the series' official X account.

Taking Steam as a sole metric (the game is also on Sony and Xbox consoles), Fallout 76 reached its all-time player peak only two days ago, with 73,368 concurrents reported on Sunday. Though originally released in 2018, Fallout 76 was exclusive to the Bethesda launcher ahead of its eventual Steam release in May 2020, when its peak concurrent hit a comparatively modest 32,982. And that remained its record until a few days ago.

Still, those figures are rendered small compared to Fallout 4's Steam numbers, which as Mollie noted, hit a 24-hour peak of 160,000 players yesterday. Its all-time peak is 472,962, which happened—like with most successful singleplayer games—during the month of its November 2015 launch. For the sake of comparison, Fallout New Vegas' 24-hour peak is sitting at 36,806, versus its 51,038 all-time peak which happened, again, at launch. It's worth mentioning that Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 are also on the Epic Games Store and GOG, so this doesn't paint the full picture for PC players.

The takeaway? Not very surprising: Successful TV adaptations of popular videogame series are always going to buoy the back catalogue. Interestingly, Australia's IGEA listed both Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 76 in its top five best-selling games in that country between April 8 and April 14, which takes in sales across Sony and Xbox consoles too. Sure, it's not been a particularly busy few weeks new-release wise, but overall: people are (re)discovering Fallout.

But it matters especially for Fallout 76, which is a live service game that relies on a healthy returning audience and—for players—a pool of collaborators to buddy up with. If you're keen to dive in, behold our guide to how to have a good time with Fallout 76 in 2024. Meanwhile, Chris argues the best game to play today is Fallout 4. As for my opinion, I'm one of those guys that mistakes loving New Vegas the best for having a personality.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.