Bethesda Un-Delays Fallout 76 expansion after refund debacle

First of all, Fallout 76 season 6 was supposed to go live yesterday. And then it wasn’t. And then eventually it did, but not before a bunch of players rushed to buy last minute rewards and then encountered a bug while trying to get refunds when they saw that the plans had changed. It was chaotic as only a live service game can be, and Bethesda responded in the most Fallout 76 possible way by offering an olive branch in the form of double XP.

Like many other live service games, Fallout 76 has a seasonal pass called the SCORE Board that players can get for special rewards by completing in-game challenges or spending money. When the season changes, the old rewards disappear, prompting players to finish crushing them or spend money on microtransactions to acquire them before the next update. This is what happened when players recently learned that Season 6 would go live on September 8, the same day as Fallout 76The long-awaited Worlds expansion that adds new custom servers and basic building functionality.

But there was a bug, like Fallout 76 has sometimes been known to prevent players from getting the remaining SCORE rewards that they spent real money on. Bethesda officially recognized this on September 7 and announced that Season 6 would be delayed for two weeks as a result.

“We have discovered an issue with the Ranks in Season 5, where players may in some cases not be able to claim the rewards for ranks they have purchased using Atoms,” the company said. written on reddit. “As a result, we are currently planning to extend Season 5 by two weeks.”

In the meantime, Bethesda has said it will turn off leaderboards through microtransactions and work on fixing the issue and getting the missing rewards for players.

This, in turn, pissed off players who had already spent money to get the remaining loot from the SCORE board. Extending Season 5 by two weeks meant they had time to earn their remaining seasonal rewards just by playing. Indeed, they felt duped.

The next day, refund request exploded on the Fallout 76 subreddit. “Todd: All Atom purchases from the last 7 days must be refunded … Complete stop” wrote a player, summoning Bethesda’s Creative Director, as the subreddit often does, as a mysterious, all-powerful deity slash meme who can make their issues go away with one click. Instead, Bethesda suddenly decided to change course and kick off Season 6 on time after all.

“Upon further investigation, we have found that we can move forward safely with the start of Season 6 today, September 8, as planned,” Bethesda wrote on the subreddit less than 24 hours later.

The editor continues:

We would also like to express our sincere apologies to all of you in the community for any confusion or inconvenience our initial announcement may have caused when we thought we needed to delay Season 6. To help address this we will be launching the Double XP events. and Double SCORE Daily Challenge this weekend starting with today’s patch update, until 12:00 p.m. ET (4:00 p.m. UTC) on Monday, September 13.

Bethesda, mind you, was the same company that initially apologized for the cheap nylon bags that came out in its Fallout 76 Collector’s editions by promising players $ 5 in Fallout 76 microtransaction dollars.

There are a lot of aggravating factors in this mess. The first is that Fallout 76 seasons traditionally last 10 weeks, but Season 5 only lasted nine. There is also no in-game countdown to let players know when the current season will expire, and Bethesda only confirmed the Season 6 end date a few weeks ago. Some players have also complained that the current SCORE Board ranking bug has been known for some time. Then there’s the fact that Bethesda announced the delay at the last minute on Reddit, not in-game or Twitter, and then rolled back the decision just as suddenly and so quietly. In other words, it was a perfect recipe for a frustrating but narrow issue to turn into a bigger live service debacle.

It’s also a way to eclipse the otherwise polished additions to come to the Publication date MMO via his Worlds update, which includes new tools for modders and role players to have fun, play a role, and help shape Fallout 76the future. The extension is mostly free, but comes at the expense of noise as above.