Fallout 76 Passes 20 Million Players Milestone; Bethesda Is ‘Planning’ Future Games

Today, Bethesda Game Studios announced that Fallout 76 reached 20 million players who've entered Appalachia since the November 2018 launch. Last we heard, in late 2022, the game was up to 13.5 million players. The studio shared a brief video message in which Creative Director Jonathan Rush thanked fans alongside several other team members.

Director and Executive Producer Todd Howard also discussed the milestone in an interview with Variety:

Related Story Fallout 76 Breaks 1 Million Players in a Day; Whole Franchise Nearly Hits 5 Million Players in a Day

Fallout 76 has kind of been sneaky popular for a while — but not to this level, and it’s just been really great for the whole studio.

Indeed, Fallout 76 surged back to #8 on April's US sales chart posted yesterday by Circana, while Fallout 4 ranked #5. The whole franchise benefited from Amazon's Prime Video show. Howard said on the topic:

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. Having an event that brings that many people into games that you have and who have never played your games before, that’s a big thing. New players who have never played a game or never played one of our games. It’s a really, really unique moment.

Todd Howard then highlighted that the show's success largely rested on the well-made characters.

The one thing about TV that Jonah told me from Day One is it’s about finding the characters. And I think it’s really awesome how these characters have resonated with the audience. And so I think there’s still stories to tell there. There’s so many great characters — I love Norm and Chet, I love the two of them in every scene. And obviously, we have the Ghoul and Lucy and Maximus. But there’s so many great characters that have a lot of stories left to tell.

What about new Fallout games? We've reported on the rumors of Microsoft fast-tracking a new mainline installment. In today's interview,