Amazon’s Fallout TV show has seen a mass of players flock to the Fallout games. That’s right, Fallout is benefiting from the fallout of Fallout.
The Fallout X account posted that a million people had played Fallout 76 “in a single day” following the release of the TV tie-in on April 10.
That isn’t even the most popular Fallout game of the moment either. According to SteamDb, Fallout 4 is.
The game has crept into the top 10 of all PC games played on Steam, and jumped from 18,000-20,000 concurrent players before the TV show came out, to a peak of over 164,000 on Sunday, April 21.
Today brings another injection of interest for Fallout 4 too. The “next-gen” update is out on April 25, and increases visual fidelity and frame rates for those playing on Xbox Series S and X, and PlayStation 5.
The upgrade also unlocks a few Creation club items across all platforms, including armour skins, a Tesla Cannon and a Heavy Incinerator weapon.
There’s more too. According to retro specialist GOG, Fallout games make up the first five entries in the retailer’s bestselling list, with Fallout 4 leading the charge.
If you’re an Xbox Game Pass subscriber, you can get involved without paying anything extra too. Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 are all part of the service’s library.
Game Pass PC subscribers can also play the oldest entries in the series, the original Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics. They’re highly regarded, although these 2D isometric oldies are less easy to digest for today’s players who don’t have any nostalgia-laced affection for the original titles.
If you’re fresh to these games, we recommend trying Fallout 4 first. It’s the most recent single-player entry in the series, while 2018’s Fallout 76 is an online multiplayer title.
Fallout 76 was considered a disappointment at launch, but has improved dramatically since. The America’s Playground update, released in March 2024, is the game’s eighteenth major upgrade. And fans will argue it’s been a good game since at least 2020’s Wastelanders update.
