Fallout Games Surpass 5 Million Players in One Day Following TV Show Success

Fallout is bigger than it has been in nearly a decade.

Believe it or not, Fallout is once again one of the most popular video game franchises on the planet. Despite having not seen a new release since 2018 with Fallout 76, Prime Video’s new Fallout TV series has proven to be a gateway for many lapsed fans (or perhaps new ones) to return to some of the older entries in the franchise. Now, this has resulted in a gargantuan revival of Fallout games of all sorts, with the multiplayer-centric entry perhaps leading the charge. 

In a new post on social media, Bethesda announced that it had recently seen over one million players dive into Fallout 76 in a single day. Although specifics weren’t provided, it’s assumed that this is one of the highest player counts that F76 has seen since releasing nearly six years ago. Beyond this, Bethesda also reported that all Fallout games as a whole were able to hit 5 million players in one day. Based on Steam data, Fallout 4 and Fallout: New Vegas have been the two single-player titles to garner the most players in recent weeks.

Perhaps the only downside of this situation is that the hunger for Fallout 5 from fans is now at an all-time high. Unfortunately, Fallout 5 will be lucky to be released by 2030 at the absolute earliest as developer Bethesda Game Studios has already made clear that it’s prioritizing the development of The Elder Scrolls VI. Following the launch of the next Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda will then turn to fully developing Fallout 5. Given the studio’s recent trajectory, though, this would put Fallout 5 on target to launch in 2032 or 2033. 

In the near term, Bethesda has at the very least announced that it will be making some big changes to Fallout 4 later this week on April 25. Specifically, the game is set to receive its long-awaited next-gen upgrade that will make it natively compatible with Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. In addition to this, new content will also be hitting Fallout 4, specifically with the arrival of new quests tied to the Enclave faction.