Pete Hines apologizes for Fallout 76 beta download issue, says it won't be 'the last bump on the road'

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"We've hit some problems that we quite honestly didn't expect."

During Bethesda's stream of the Fallout 76 beta on Tuesday (from Australia), Pete Hines was asked how the beta was going. "Ask a PC person how it's going today," he replied. "Not particularly fine."

Hines recapped the issues with the BethesdaNet launcher and the fact that many players had to re-download the entire beta a second time. "We definitely knew we were going to have issues and bumps," Hines said on the stream. "That was the whole point of it, is to try to find those things and flesh them out, but at the same time also give people a chance to experience the game and see it. And so, we've hit some problems that we quite honestly didn't expect."

Re-downloading the beta meant some players were late getting into the beta when it began, while others missed it entirely because they weren't able to complete the download during the four-hour beta window. In response, Bethesda extended the next scheduled beta to run a few extra hours.

"Apologies to anyone who had to download that stuff," said Hines. "But, you know, I'm here to tell you: it's not going to be the last bump on the road. And hopefully we continue to smooth those out, but that is in fact the whole point of doing this beta, is to find those things and see if we can't resolve them, while also letting people just have fun and enjoy the game."

The next Fallout 76 beta session is scheduled for Thursday, November 1, from 11 am - 8 pm PT / 2 pm - 11 pm ET. You can see the twitch video of Hines below, beginning at 15:30.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.