Last month’s disastrous Fallout 4 update was intended to fix and improve the old RPG, but instead broke a lot of stuff and angered fans. Now Bethesda is patching the patch with a just-announced upcoming update to Fallout 4.
On April 25, Bethesda released a large update for Fallout 4, its nearly decade-old open-world RPG. The update had been teased nearly two years earlier but didn’t arrive until last month, shortly after the launch of the hit Amazon TV show based on the post-apocalyptic franchise. The so called “next-gen” patch was meant to fix some stuff, improve performance on all platforms, make the game “Verified” on Steam Deck, and generally speaking improve Fallout 4. Instead, it broke mods, led to the last-minute delay of a fan-developed expansion, added new glitches, and was seen by many fans as an unneeded update. Now, Bethesda is going to (hopefully) fix all that with another new Fallout 4 update.
On May 10, Bethesda announced via a short post on Twitter that Fallout 4 would get a new update on May 13. According to the company, this next patch will include “new options for graphics and performance settings,” and will also feature more “fixes” and “improvements.”
“Thanks for your continued feedback and support,” is how Bethesda ended the post.
No patch notes or other details were included in the tweet, nor on Bethesda’s website, but it appears that the company is well aware that its big, fancy Fallout 4 update was a flop that angered fans and made the game worse in some key ways.
For example, Steam Deck players lost access to most graphical settings after the patch. On consoles, players reported new, weird texture bugs involving certain weapons. And on PC, players did report improved performance in some areas, but all their mods were broken and needed to be updated. Bethesda’s Fallout 4 update also led to the delay of Fallout: London, a massive and highly anticipated fan-developed expansion for the game that was set to arrive two days before Bethesda’s big “next-gen” patch. Realizing that this would be a problem—as the mod would break after the update went live on April 25—Fallout London’s devs held back the mod.
Fans understandably didn’t like any of this, and while I’m happy to see Bethesda moving so quickly to fix the update and hopefully improve Fallout 4 (for real this time), it really does seem like the company should have talked to modders and worked with them on updating the old RPG. Maybe next time!
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