According to Pete Hines (so grain of salt this news given the source’s history of outright lying about internal occurrences), revealed in statements made to US Gamer how Bethesda was surprised few wanted to actually play PvP in Fallout 76. How or even why this revelation was surprising after they intentionally nerfed what was already a fun-lacking, unrewarding mode more known for rampant cheaters and hackers was not discussed. Nor was any mention made towards how the toxic community chased out those interested in PvP.

“Well, I mean at the end of the day, our intention was always, we’re going to put this out there, see what folks think, and then cater the stuff that we do later to their reaction. So, for example, I think we were a little surprised how few people wanted to take part in PvP and how many more they were interested in PvE together. As opposed to, ‘I want to test my mettle against you and let’s get into a duel.’ There’s some folks who do, don’t get me wrong, but I think it’s a smaller percentage of our player base than we thought,” -Hines who is never shown the data by his own admission

What is most surprising about Hine’s statements is not the absolute lack of self-awareness and the strong hints at managerial chaos. No, what is really surprising is Pete Hines outright admitting they had no concrete plan for Fallout 76 and instead just threw out a bunch of miss mashed features to see what stuck.

Their answer appears to have been idiots who refused to stop playing a game even as they knew hackers are stealing people’s entire inventory en-mass. Who despite numerous updates breaking the game, Bethesda chasing off and harassing community tool creators, will never stop playing the game. Fortunately for them, Bethesda has a plan ready in place to move forward.

“We have a plan. We have a roadmap that we’ll be sharing before too long, probably after Wastelanders. Let’s get through Wastelanders and then talk about that. That will cover all the way through the end of this year. We’ve already been talking about, internally, what is our plan for content into next year. When we feel confident enough to share that with everybody, I’m not certain, but like, we throw it out pretty far.”

Okay not really. From Corporatese to English, what he just said essentially boils down to they have ideas on where to take the game, but those ideas won’t be greenlit unless Wastelanders is a resounding success. Essentially it can be inferred that the scope of the game’s future prospects will be determined by how many people adopt it during its Steam debut.

A successful launch will likely mean content and feature expansions. An unsuccessful launch will probably mean the greenlighting of a new single-player Fallout experience if one has not already been greenlit and only the bare minimum of support going forward.