Graphic by Louise Nillas | Mercury Staff
How Bethesda’s memberships scam gamers
Bethesda released a scary addition just in time for
Halloween: a “Fallout 76” subscription service. This “premium membership”
promises all sorts of bug-ridden benefits for the low price of $12 a month and
might as well be a spooky scam.
Fallout 1st is billed as a “premium membership” that brings
one of the most requested features to “Fallout 76”: private worlds. That’s
right, for a low price of $12 per month or $100 per year, you can have the
privilege of playing by yourself. Along with unlimited storage in your
scrapbox, premium currency monthly, an outfit and emotes, what more could you
want?
Sarcasm aside, this is a straight rip-off. Not only is it a
subscription service, it’s a subscription service for buggy features that
should have been in the game already. In private worlds, some containers spawn
already looted — supposedly due to how loot is instanced — and people from your
friend list can freely join your private, invite-only server. Besides the
private-but-not-actually worlds, the “unlimited space” scrap box is losing
things put inside of it, never to be seen again.
These features should not be locked behind a paywall — a
monthly/yearly one at that, especially when it’s for a game that you presumably
already bought. Right now, I can boot up “Borderlands 2,” and have the choice
of a public online game or a private game by myself. While “Borderlands 2” is a
vastly different online first-person-shooter RPG, the ability to play by myself
is not locked behind a monthly fee. I paid for the game. I should have a
complete game to play. Everyone should, if they pay for one.
This is ultimately the result of the prevailing “games as a
service” philosophy. Get the game, and the developers keep working on it to
improve it over time. Except now, it’s become an excuse to release buggy and
unfinished games to be improved as the “service” continues for another five
years. Examples of failures include “Evolve” and “Anthem,” the former an
example of bad support and the latter an example of a dumpster fire. That’s not
to say that there haven’t been some successes, with “No Man’s Sky” and “Destiny
2” becoming actually fun games, despite failing spectacularly in critical and
public opinion on launch day.
Despite its shortcomings, “games as a service” is still generally
implemented in a more consumer-friendly manner than in Fallout 1st.
Downloadable content is also released for most triple-A titles as additions
funded by their purchase. For example, “Destiny 2” has multiple DLCs adding on
more campaigns and missions, but the base game is still playable and
feature-complete. You don’t have to pay $12 a month to be in a party with your
friends or have more room for your guns.
Ultimately, the problem isn’t with subscription services in
general. It’s the terrible value proposition that is Fallout 1st. “World of
Warcraft” is a subscription service that acts like an arcade machine: pay to
play the full game with all its features. “Guild Wars 2” is a free MMORPG that
compares very favorably to WOW. Fallout 1st’s value proposition is small
conveniences for the same price of playing a better game. The features in
Fallout 1st should have been quality of life improvements, a step in the right
direction to making “Fallout 76” not garbage. Instead, it’s a testament to
Bethesda’s greed.
If you’d like to play “Fallout 76,” I’d recommend instead
installing “The Outer Worlds,” “Fallout New Vegas,” “No Man’s Sky,” or
literally anything else. If you are still playing “Fallout 76” and want it to
be at least decent, continue bothering Bethesda. While it’s not clear if
Bethesda director Todd Howard and the team have functional ears, they seem to
be continuing to support the game, and are clearly responsive to some degree.
But most of all, do not support this business model. Don’t buy this game, don’t
buy the “premium membership,” and don’t buy other games that attempt to
implement “games as a service” in such a greedy manner. The only reason why
Fallout 1st exists is because Bethesda thought they could profit from it, and
players should ensure they don’t.