Fallout 76 only available through Bethesda launcher on PC

IGN and Destructoid have confirmed.

Fallout 76 will only be playable through Bethesda's own launcher on PC, so if you're on Steam, you're out of luck.

I'm curious to see what PC gamers think. Does this influence your buying decision?

They're all going to start doing this aren't they? Fortnite not through googleplay, destiny and cod on battlenet, this.

My big question is - will Cyberpunk be a Gog exclusive?

I believe this is another step to get control over mods (over long period and multiple games), so this is another reason not to get FO76.

If a game I want to play comes to PC but not Steam I'm sad to say that I don't even regard it as a PC game anymore, and I just buy it on console instead. It's gotten pretty bad.

With the release of Fortnite I realized that I'm kind of in the minority though. The success of that game kinda shows that Steam isn't all that important, and it really shouldn't be. But it's so convenient, and I'm so invested at this point that actually caring about another storefront isn't likely.

While I'm not interested enough in Fallout 76 for this move to bother me, it does worry me. Because this might be them testing the waters for TES6. And I super don't want to buy a Bethesda game on console where I can't be certain I'll have access to community bug fixes and mods, good frame rate and future proofed graphics.

If I was interested in the game, then absolutely it would influence my buying decision. I either wouldn't buy it at all, or just pick it up on PS4 if the game is good and if like Digital Foundry shows that the game isn't running like absolute garbo.

So the game that I won't play will be on the thing that I don't use.

...Okay.

mmm...this doesn't really move the needle one way or the other for me. not sure i want to play this, and it certainly isn't a day 1 purchase.

if this was a game i was really jonesing for- then yes, i might be slightly peeved. but i also don't have that sort of platform-loyalty that would seem to influence this sort of thing- so i just go where the games are. if i really wanted it, i'd get it where i need to.

but all things being equal steam is without question my preferred pc platform. their feature set is just the most robust, and it's where my friends list is.

Games are getting more spread out on PC now anyway, so it won't influence my decision. I think I currently have more games installed on GOG than Steam.

Depending on the X enhancements, I might just get it for Xbox One.

Oh god just take me back to physical releases when I didn't have to worry about having 10 different annoying digital games services installed on my PC just to play.

@boonsong: Surely clicking to open a different launcher is easier than having to swap discs.

@the_greg: Eh you just get a crack .exe/no cd patch

Probably not. Cyberpunk is too big of a game for CDP and GoG's market share still isn't big enough. Unless GoG REALLY explodes in the three or four years until Cyberpunk it would just be shooting themselves in the foot. What I expect is the same thing that happened with The Witcher 3: Lots of promotions. Attempts to restrict the best digital discounts to GoG (remember back when GMG was "legit"? CDP does). And likely the roll out of some new QoL features for the GoG Galaxy launcher (I think Witcher 3 introduced achievements and cloud saves). But it will still be on Steam. I COULD see the Humble Store sales having only a GoG key though.

Bethesda don't have a large market share, but they also aren't selling a "do or die" game. If F76 flops they will just focus on TES6 and all of their iD/Arkane/MachineGames games. And if F76 does well, they've drastically increased the Bethesda launcher market share.

Personally: I am happy more games are doing this. I like Steam, but Valve needs competition. My only real complaint is that I have to jump through an extra hurdle to stream to my Steam Link/nVidia Shield. But I haven't really tried that since getting a new monitor as I don't want to deal with different resolutions and aspect ratios.

@charlie_victor_bravo: My first thought on this was mod control as well. My second thought is that people are starting to see that you actually don't need to put your game on Steam anymore to sell it. Fortnite, LOL, Blizzard games and now CoD games as well as the Battlefronts/fields. None of those games are on Steam and they still sell well. With public sentiment finally starting to shift from "OMG everything on Steam!" to "OMG everything on Switch! Steam is nothing but shovel-ware!" it's the perfect time for publishers/developers to get away from it and stop giving Valve a cut.

I don't hate non-Steam launchers. It's the only one I have that auto-opens but that's mostly because of the friends list. I won't begrudge a game just because it's not on Steam. I'm not sure how interested I am in this game anyway, so this doesn't affect me.

Seems that way. Not just for video games either, take for instance Disney starting their own streaming service, so no more Disney films on other streaming services like Netflix. Or CBS All Access, which means, at least for people in the U.S. we can't watch Star Trek Discovery. Everyone just wants you to put money into their service so they can get all the profits.

@the_greg said:

I dunno... people who have Steam on auto start might be in the right of complaining about not wanting to click the start menu, barely scroll down to B, and possibly click again to reveal the shortcut for the Bethesda Launcher and click that. Those extra clicks add up, and every mouse click is precious.

...That, and on a less facetious note since I agree with your comment in that this is no big deal, I'm pretty sure that anyone could just setup a Steam shortcut for the game and it'll just load up the launcher and go, and I'm pretty sure that Uplay and the Rockstar store version of GTAV work with Steam's In-Home Streaming, so I do question the OP's notion of being "out of luck" if you're "on Steam".

That's a shame, i don't have the Bethesda launcher.

I swear, I'm going to have more launchers than games.

I have a bitter-sweet stance on Steam as a whole. Of course the convenience of having the vast majority of my PC games obtained and updated through Steam is pretty good and a lot of the games had been bought from various Steam sales for good prices. The flip side is Valve not having much competition and assuming the role as the sole provider of almost every PC game. Stuff like the levels of shovelware allowed and issues with early access show Vavle don't get it right all the time and for a long time there wasn't really anywhere else to go if you didn't like that.

I personally am happy that other clients like Origin, Uplay and Battlenet have stepped up in the quality they offer if only to give Valve a bit of a kick up the backside.

I wasn't going to get this anyway so it makes little difference to me in this instance, but this sort of thing is getting to be a real pain in the arse.

I've had my Uplay account and my Rockstar Social Club accounts hacked over the past year and I've had no reason to use either (except to secure them again) in 2+ years. Uplay I refuse to use anyway because of an issue with it that made it impossible to play Splinter Cell Blacklist.

But there are more interesting looking games released than I have time to play anyway, so avoiding the ones that require me to sign up to another shitty DRM is as good a way as any to decide between them I suppose.

This makes me less likely to get the game. I was kinda on the fence about it already... that said... maybe.. nothing good (to me) is coming out .. so i might give it a try. I really don't want to be forced to play with randos.

But, i just got WoW after 3 years of being clean... so.. i am that bored!

@beachthunder: I think CD Project are a little more in touch with their fanbase to know that would be pretty annoying for a lot of people, but who knows.

If anything, this makes me slightly more interested in it. I don't detest Steam, but like I keep saying over and over, I hate hate hate that's it's still the only place to get so many PC games. It's gotten better over the years, sure, but a lot of big games especially are only available on Steam and it kinda sucks.

Clearly, we're rapidly approaching the point of too many launchers. Some might argue we're already there. Not every company needs one, I get that, but I still support the idea of publishers stepping away from Steam if only to continue to show other publishers that "hey, you don't need Steam to survive!." Ideally though, more publishers would embrace GoG.com, Twitch, and other neutral 3rd-parties. I know CD Project Red is tied to GoG, but unlike Valve, they put their games out elsewhere so they fall into the neutral category to me.

Good. I'm not interested, but the more competition there is for Steam, the harder they'll have to push to keep customers. As it stands right now, Steam has an unhealthy market share and they're stagnating. Sometimes even actively regressing. Yesterday, I wanted to open a ticket for an issue I was having gifting an item, and it took me almost an hour to find out how to actually open a ticket. Even the link that Steam itself gave me to open one only lead to some self-diagnosis FAQ of the issue, and I couldn't find my question on the list.

They are so horrendously behind in so many ways, and the more that games cater their releases to Steam, the less Valve is inclined to actually do anything to improve their service. Bigger companies like EA, like Epic, like Bethesda, are the only ones big enough to actually push back against Steam. I don't really care about launchers; I just place shortcuts on my desktop of all the games I'm currently playing. Problem solved.

Steam sucks now so im fine with it. We all lived when he had to install every game individually before. im fine with a few launchers tbh

Steam has too much power right now.

My favorite parts of steam are the in house streaming and controller support. Since that works for any game / program, this doesn't really change anything for me.

I'm not really sure how this could affect mods, any integrity check they could do in their own launcher could be baked into the games exe on any platform.

I think it's great Steam is finally getting more competition. I think you're being foolish if the game being in another launcher sways your decision. If you have money in your Steam wallet and were planning on using it to purchase this game sure, that's a legitimate excuse. If you can't be arsed to add the shortcut to Steam then you've got bigger problems.

Maybe I'm being cynical/naive to how this all works but I don't think we would have this problem of steam/multiple launchers at all if Microsoft wasn't completely awful at managing their platform. It wasn't till windows 10 that they really started catering to playing games which is something I don't think I will ever understand. They spent so much time, resources and energy chasing Apple in circles instead of building on a platform the vast majority of their customers use for playing games. To be fair they do have a built-in significant install base in company and office use which I don't blame them for focusing on but seemingly ignoring games and leaving it up to third parties I think has bitten them and consumers in the ass in a big way.

The only reason multiple launchers are a thing is because of the way Valve handles their business model. Being an independent company the only way they are profitable is if they take a pretty decent cut out of the sales of the games they sell. Also, the control they require over the products on their store makes it hard for studious like EA, Ubisoft etc. to manage the products in a way that's profitable to them. If Microsoft had a viable umbrella for different studios games they wouldn't need to take as big (if any) cut or have control over how these games are managed. They would simply have a built-in place to get games with little to no risk to game devs and studious. Of course, this is a dream scenario and we are way past the point of this being possible but my main point is Microsoft bears the blame for this more than anyone else for me.

Valve just saw a void they could capitalize on and even though they haven't been the best at it no one else, even the platform all this is built on, comes close to doing it better. PC gaming is a mess and the only way I see it getting cleaner (if that's even possible) is if Microsoft makes a real effort to make their platform better for the people that use it. Rant over.

Now that Discord exists I take way less issue with games getting out of the Steam ecosystem.

I doubt it. CDP Red has been good at offering their games on their thing without any DRM and still put them out on Steam for example. I don't see why they would change that.

The only silver lining to this is that maybe Valve will start cleaning up Steam. Maybe, just maybe even some kind of curation!

I can't say I'm 100% surprised at this, but I haven't used the Bethesda launcher yet. Honestly, though, the days of whinging about using UPlay or Origin should be mostly in the past; it's slightly inconvenient to have more than one storefront/launcher thing, but most of the launchers I've used recently are mostly solid and bug-free. If more of them can compete with Steam's 30% take of revenue for other developers hopefully we'll have a lot more choices in terms of where we spend our money.

Kind of a bummer, but I'm not surprised, many companies seem to be going this route. I am interested in Fallout 76 though, so I'll begrudgingly give it a shot.

Steam would be more convenient, as most of my games are on there, but I've been souring on Steam/Valve these past few years. And battlenet/Uplay/origin are pretty solid launchers these days.

Does it? Why, exactly?

Hmm yeah i totally think CyberPunk would be a GOG Galaxy exclusive they already got that witcher card game only on GOG, same thing happened with Bethesda. To be honest if i could switch stores now i would go for GOG, Especially after Steam having zero quality control and people bringing cryptominers to steam. But it's hard to switch when you got 400 steam games.

Also i just don't like Monopoly's in general so i am okay with company's trying to battle steam.

@frytup: 0 zero quality control. Straight up Cryptominers being uploaded to there storefront, And there store front tend to load slowly. 10 years back steam gave a shit about games being uploaded to there servers, now they just opened the floodgates and good small indie games tend to suffer from it. It's gone so bad for smaller developers that there now pushing for a switch release cause the storefront is better.

OK, but how does that impact me as a user of Steam and someone who has no interest in sifting through the store front looking for random games? "Steam sucks"... if you're a certain kind of user, I guess? For me, it's reliable, saves my games in the cloud, offers consistently fast download speeds, access to a bunch of cool mod content, and there is no equivalent to Steam Link anywhere else.

Do I really mind having to use other launchers? Not if they offer all of the above and I can still add them to Steam Link, I suppose, but having all of your PC games in one place is an undeniable convenience.

We would all benefit from small indie developers doing well on a curated steam store. Instead of the horrible mess we got now.