Fallout 4's Creations Bundle stumbles from the Vault to Mostly Negative reviews, as players lament the pack 'does not work' and 'made the game buggier'

Two Brahmin clad in armour feed from a trough in Fallout 4

(Image credit: Bethesda)

Bethesda released a Creations Bundle for Fallout 4 yesterday as part of its tenth anniversary celebrations, adding 150 player-created items for the not-so-low price of £17.99. Unfortunately, Bethesda appears to have dropped the birthday cake on its way to the party, as players report some pretty serious issues with the Creation Bundle and its contents.

At the time of writing, Fallout 4—Creations Bundle sat at a "Mostly Negative" Steam rating with 124 reviews—quite a lot for what is essentially an asset pack. While some of the reviews complain about the price and the pack's content—which is apparently a repackaging of items that were already available on the Creations Store—the bulk of the complaints lament that the pack doesn't actually work.

"Game absolutely refuses to let you attempt to install anything involving the Creation Club and freezes upon launching and quitting the game to the point where you can't even use Task Manager or Steam to force close," writes Steam user HemlokGaming. Meanwhile, grimengine states that the Creation Bundle "actually made the game buggier, and somehow makes the game crash PC-breakingly hard when trying to do the simple action of closing the game."

Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition - Reveal Trailer - YouTube

Watch On

The issue appears to be related in part to connectivity with the Bethesda store, with various reviews citing an inability to connect or load up the creations menu. Others state that, even when the Creations Bundle does work, not all the Creations mentioned are actually in the Bundle. "Does not include all creations. Still more microtransactions to follow. That or it's bugged," writes rudetearex.

The latter seems to be the likely option here, with other users citing problems with the Creations menu added in Fallout 4's most recent patch on November 6. "The 'creations' tab in the main menu seems to be broken, can't tell what I own, what's a mod or what's a Creation Club piece of content," writes KFC Bargain Bucket (strong name).

It all sounds extremely messy, and echoes back to the similarly troubled release of Skyrim: Anniversary Edition, which still has a Mixed Steam rating four years on from release. And there are apparently still issues lingering from Bethesda's Next Gen upgrade of Fallout 4 last year, which caused huge disruption at the time of its release. Bethesda even warned players that the anniversary edition would break mods upon launch, though the Creations Bundle seems to have broken a whole lot more.

It's an unfortunate scenario, given Bethesda's creative chief, Todd Howard, so recently spoke about the studio learning from its past mistakes—though in that case, he was referring to Fallout 4's cinematic dialogue system, which he said 'did not resonate' with players even though the studio 'spent forever' working on it.

TOPICS

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.