Fallout 76 crossplay support is one feature that fans have been asking for since the game’s release in 2018. It seems like, after all these years, those fans still have some hope as Bethesda has officially confirmed crossplay development is under consideration. Jon Rush, Creative Director of Fallout 76, and Bill LaCoste, Production Director, touched upon the topic during an interview with Polygon. They also shared reasons forcing them to take their time ahead of the feature’s release.
Fallout 76 Crossplay Support Needs to Overcome Technical Hurdles
Fallout 76 offers co-op multiplayer gameplay, but due to the lack of crossplay support, it significantly reduces the number of players one can team up with and explore the Wastelands. Bethesda executives revealed that they are aware of players’ consistent demand for Fallout 76 crossplay support and are looking into the implementation side of things. However, there are several ‘technical hurdles’ to overcome as the game was not developed with crossplay in mind.
LaCoste explained,
“It’s just huge technical hurdles that are things that you tackle before release, during your actual development of the product. So going back and retrofitting it to do that, when you have different places that players are pointing into, and now you’re having to worry about entitlements and account purchases and currency.”
He went on to reassure the fans that Bethesda is continuing to investigate and working on turning Fallout 76 crossplay support into a reality. However, one should not expect this to happen anytime soon. The team will likely take its time before releasing the feature, which makes sense. It would not want to break any other functionality or downgrade the current gameplay experience in any way to accommodate crossplay.
Here is what Rush said about the development plans,
“We are looking into it, and we have plans to try to scope out what that work is going to entail for us. It’s just not in the immediate plans for us. We know players want it.”
Bethesda released Fallout 76 in 2018 as its first multiplayer video game in the series. It received negative feedback because of various issues, including the lack of NPCs to interact with. A lot of these issues were fixed by the time the studio released the Wastelanders update in 2020. The game saw a surge in the number of players after the Fallout TV show release on Amazon Prime Video.
