It's no secret that Fallout 4 is one of the biggest releases of the year. Bethesda knows this too, but it's also aware that such a huge game that gives players so much freedom is also prone to bugs and glitches.
Finally acknowledging the kinks discovered by players in the post-apocalyptic survival title, Bethesda announced that it will begin rolling out patches to fix these issues next week. Following its usual patch release timeline, Bethesda says it will start with a beta patch available to Steam users before finally making the full release available to PC players then console gamers.
It also says it will roll out smaller patches more frequently instead of pushing them out in huge chunks to make sure every small issue is addressed. This also lessens the risk of introducing even more bugs that may be unintentionally brought about with such a large patch.
Bethesda acknowledges that the huge freedom gamers enjoy in Fallout 4 is also the same thing that makes bugs and glitches possible, since a mixture of so many elements at once can create unintended consequences.
"Given the scale and complexity of the systems at work, especially when allowing you to build your own settlements, we're happy that Fallout 4 is our most robust and solid release ever, and we'd like to thank our amazing QA staff who worked as hard as anyone to break the game so we could fix it during development," Bethesda says. "But a hundred testers will never replicate the many millions playing the game now, and we're hard at work addressing the top issues."
What these top issues are Bethesda declines to say. Most players have reported a relatively bug-free experience, but at least one major glitch has been discovered. The bug first appeared on PC but was later reported to be affecting Xbox One and PlayStation 4 players as well. The game suddenly crashes when players try to complete a settlement challenge that takes them to Monsignor Plaza. The game just repeatedly fails every time players do the same thing, and the crash doesn't come with an error message to tell players what it's all about.
Other problems are not as game-breaking, but it's always better to have them patched instead of not at all.
Fallout 4 scored a massive win at launch, shipping 12 million new copies worth $750 million on day one and breaking concurrent user records on Steam. The record for biggest number of users at any given moment previously belong to Grand Theft Auto V, with 380,000 people playing at the same time. Fallout 4 smashed that record with 444,000 at its peak on the first day.
