Bethesda Keeps Looking Into Fallout 76 Cross-Play, but It ‘Wasn’t Designed That Way From the Beginning,’ Todd Howard Says

With all things Fallout now enjoying a significant boost following the breakout success of the Fallout TV show, Fallout 76 is enjoying a significant rise in player numbers. Last week, Bethesda announced that Fallout 76, its most recent mainline Fallout game, saw over one million people play in a single day.

That focused attention on Fallout 76 has brought its lack of cross-play under the microscope, especially at a time when most multiplayer-focused games do have cross-play. In an interview with Kinda Funny Games, Bethesda development chief Todd Howard explained why Fallout 76 does not yet have cross-play, pointing out that when the game was developed it was not done so with cross-play in mind.

“We keep looking into it. It [Fallout 76] wasn’t designed that way from the beginning,” Howard said. “So obviously we get into server and database silos.”

Fallout 76 launched in November 2018 across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and was savaged by critics and players at release. However, over the last five years, Bethesda has worked to improve the game, turning around sentiment to such an extent that Fallout 76 now enjoys a ‘mostly positive’ user review rating on Steam. Howard said Fallout 76 has been “sneaky popular” for the last three or four years.

Not only does Fallout 76 not have cross-play, it also doesn’t have cross-progression, another pretty standard feature for multiplayer games in 2024. In the interview, Howard went on to say cross-progression is more important to Bethesda than cross-play when it comes to Fallout 76, but again, technical issues with the way Fallout 76 was built are a stumbling block.

“Here’s what I would say, which is for us the more the important thing is cross-progression than cross-play — and we do separate them — we’d love to have it all.” Howard said. “It’s something we are looking at, but I will say it’s quite — the way that [Fallout 76] was architected from the beginning — a technical lift. Not saying we are or aren’t doing anything, we are looking at it and seeing where that’s going to impact people.”

While cross-play and cross-progression sound unlikely for Fallout 76, it sounds like both are very much on the table for Bethesda’s future games. Indeed the recently released Starfield, a single-player adventure, does have cross-progression between PC and Xbox.

Howard added: “Going forward in the world we want to be in, I think it’s very important and something that you know in our future games that we’re going to be really, really mindful about to make sure — in particular the progression — that where you pick up a game you’re able no matter what screen you’re on you’re able to just keep going with your character and what you were doing.”

Howard’s interview with Kinda Funny Games also revealed a fall release window for Starfield expansion Shattered Space, and potentially two new Fallout projects.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.