Bethesda reveals that Fallout 76 still won’t have cross-platform play despite Sony’s change of heart

While Bethesda fought for cross-platform play within The Elder Scrolls: Legends, the firm stated that Sony’s unhelpful policy against the practice blocked the feature from being included within Fallout 76. Following the surprise announcement that Sony had re-evaluated its stance on cross-platform play, fans are disappointed to find out that Fallout 76 still won’t be a part of that list.

“You cannot do cross-play in 76,” Todd Howard apologetically told GameStar.de in July. “We’d really love that but right now we can’t. Sony is not as helpful as everyone would like.” While it took Sony a lot longer to join its rivals in embracing the practice of cross-platform play, its eventual one-eighty was praised by Bethesda marketing boss Pete Hines on Twitter, with a congratulatory “Well done, Sony.”

Folks, chill. I work with a lot of devs and games for whom this is important going forward.

Fallout 76 does not support crossplay, for a number of reasons. I have no idea if it ever will. But I assure you it is not on our radar right now as we focus on B.E.T.A. and Launch.

— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) September 26, 2018

This in turn prompted fans to speculate that Fallout 76 would eventually get cross-platform play, as it seemed Bethesda had always intended. Sadly, Hines’ reply suggests that this won’t be the case. “Folks, chill. I work with a lot of devs and games for whom this is important going forward. Fallout 76 does not support crossplay, for a number of reasons. I have no idea if it ever will. But I assure you it is not on our radar right now as we focus on B.E.T.A. and Launch.”

That isn’t to say that Fallout 76 will never house support for one of the hottest features on the market, but it certainly won’t be present during its launch on November 14th and the developers have no solidified plans beyond that. Despite Fallout 76 missing cross-platform play, Sony’s decision is still likely to affect most future Bethesda games, providing its multiplayer stints prove to be a success.

KitGuru Says: Given that this is the first official multiplayer Fallout game, it is a shame that cross-platform play won’t be included but it’s perhaps for the best given a plethora of balancing issues that would need to be tweaked ahead of release. What do you think about cross-platform play? Does its omission affect your potential purchase of Fallout 76?

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