Bethesda made a mess for themselves this Tuesday when the Bethesda.net launcher wiped all of the Fallout 76 game data mere hours before the first BETA session for PC.
The game studio planned to launch their first multi-platform Break it Early Test Application for the upcoming multiplayer RPG, Fallout 76, this Tuesday. Unfortunately for PC users, a large number of participants experienced a glitch with the Bethesda.net game launcher. Upon interaction, the launcher would no longer recognize the pre-loaded data and would attempt to redownload it. Since the game is around 45 GB in size, many, if not all of the affected users, were unable to redownload the game before the session ended.
As you can imagine, people were rightly angry about this, myself included! While the Bethesda Support Twitter acknowledged the issue, they were unable to recover the Fallout 76 game data in time for players to participate. Don’t bother looking at the twitter replies, it’s a mess of angry comments.
Bethesda has since apologized for the mess-up. To make it up to the players, they’ve since adjusted the session time from for Thursday, November 1’s session to (2 PM – 11 PM). This is a six-hour increase from the original schedule for that day, resulting in four more hours planned overall if you subtract the two lost from Tuesday’s mishap.
Some found this acceptable, which I agree. Others still are shouting for refunds on forums.
This was a flop on Bethesda’s part, for sure. While framed as a beta, the whole BETA process has seemed more promotional than technical. I will give credit, however. I’m glad it had happened when it did. Without this beta test, this glitch might have made its way to launch day. Can you imagine how much worse the situation would have been then?
Fallout 76 will be formally releasing on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on November 14.
