We all have bad days. Sometimes even weeks. But if a week has gone as badly for you as this last one has for Bethesda, then I feel for you. Someone has purchased the domain for falloutfirst.com, and is using it to absolutely savage the publisher’s latest bright idea.
Earlier this week Bethesda rolled out Fallout 1st, a new premium subscription service for its troubled MMO Fallout 76. Given the shoddy state in which that game launched last year, the announcement of a premium membership with a bold $100 per year asking price did not go down brilliantly on Twitter and Reddit. ‘Rubbish, it’ll be fine’, some hypothetical die-hard fans presumably said, and went ahead and purchased it anyway, because Bethesda couldn’t mess this up, could it? It did.
Reports of private servers being invaded by other players and scrapboxes eating materials were fairly common and the fans who were miffed before are now furious. And if there’s one thing the internet has taught us – as Blizzard could’ve told Bethesda after Diablo Immortal last year – it’s that its denizens can find some pretty inventive ways to channel their emotions. Also, some of them know how to buy and design websites. Also, you should /definitely/ register every domain name that bears a resemblance to your products. You can see where I’m going with this.
A group of irate players have bought the domain for falloutfirst.com and – I don’t know what to say. The page is titled, *sigh*, “Fallout f*** you 1st”. They’ve replicated the original announcement page but with far more crude language and general ‘f*** you’s to Bethesda along the way. I would love to quote more examples, but I think I’ve reached my asterisk quota for the day.
You can go look at the website for yourself if you like, however I’d stress the quantity of swearing and obscene language makes it 18+ and NSFW. As it’s – for now – run by a rogue party, it could also change in the near future to pretty much anything they’d like it to, so we leave the choice to you to click that link or not.
If you don’t want to play Fallout 76, yeah that’s fair enough, but there are a bunch of other open-world games you could be playing instead. Why not try them out?