Bethesda announced this week that Fallout 76 has passed the 20 million player milestone, six years after the game’s launch. While some of the growth is likely due to the developers continuing to improve the game, the newest upsurge in popularity is thanks to the premier of the Fallout Prime Video series. According to a report from Variety, the previous milestone was 17 million last December.
Within two months of the Prime series’ launch, daily active users across the Fallout game series have gone up by 600%, according to the report. Bethesda’s Todd Howard told Variety in an interview, “It’s kind of been sneaky popular for a while — but not to this level and it’s just been really great for the for the whole studio… Depending on the ‘Fallout’ game, you’re looking at a 4-6x increase in daily players, which is beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my 30 years of doing this.”
Howard confirmed that Bethesda was planning future games in the series, though he carefully emphasized the word “plan.” Bethesda’s current known projects include the Shattered Space DLC for Starfield and the previously announced Elder Scrolls VI.
Fallout 76 had a rocky launch thanks to in-game bugs and issues that made it difficult to play (something that, in retrospect, puts it in company with many of Bethesda’s other titles) and at the time Bethesda was reportedly refusing to issue refunds to players who requested them. However, over time the developers improved and augmented the game.