Bethesda trolled over 2 million Fallout fans with a 24-hour stream of nothing

Cal Jeffrey

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Facepalm: Bethesda may have just pulled off the biggest trolling of fans of any developer in recent memory during a Twitch steam leading up to today's announcement of Vault 76.

Yesterday the game maker started a stream on its Twitch channel. According to The Verge, the cryptic feed showed a Pip Boy statuette standing in front of the iconic Fallout “Please Stand By” screen. And so it remained for nearly 24 hours after which the teaser trailer for Fallout 76 was shown.

During the broadcast, more than 2 million unique viewers visited the feed 15 million times. The channel hosted more than 100,000 concurrent viewers throughout most of the stream anxiously waiting for whatever it was that Bethesda was planning to announce.

The company was clearly playing on fans’ hunger for any information on a new Fallout project, and that in and of itself is not necessarily trolling.

However, after the Fallout 76 trailer concluded, Todd Howard himself briefly appeared on screen to say, “We have had over 2 million unique visitors to this stream to watch, I don’t know what, nothing.” He then stepped off-screen, and the stream ended.

Fans, some of whom were surely holding vigil all night, were not thrilled at the bait. “IS THAT IT” some in the Twitch chat room wailed. Others surely had a good laugh at the whole ridiculous incident.

The feed was not completely devoid of mildly entertaining moments though. Polygon collected a handful of clips that lightened up the otherwise extremely boring feed. The excerpt above has Pete Hines toasting Pip Boy with a little sumpin-sumpin.

Bethesda’s announcement of Vault 76 is sure to elicit strong feelings among fans. Some are sure to be excited about a new Fallout entry, while others will be extremely disappointed if the unconfirmed news that it will be a multiplayer survival title turns out to be true. However, nothing can beat Bethesda’s ultimate “hurry-up-and-wait” Twitch troll — not even Epic’s weeks-long comet tease. The Verge does point out, however, that Ubisoft pulled a similar stunt back in 2015 with Far Cry Primal.

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"...more than 2 million unique viewers visited the feed 15 million times."

Even Bethesda has to be shocked at that amount of volume for a 24-hour period.
 
No great shock - they established with Fallout 4 that its going to be their "screw the fans" franchise.

Really, I though Skyrim was a joke for the actual fans of ES series, they dumbed down every aspect of the gameplay for the sake of empty size and more of well meaningless cells. Then they give a semi ok Mmo which no one asked for, and continually tell fans they won't make the games semi consistently, just release the same game over 12 times while we wait.

Bethesda has become like Blizzard, chip on their shoulders riding on franchise hype rather than actual progressive games.

I read an interview where they were saying they were tired of making ES games......as a gamer and a fan I get outraged, as a studio publisher you made a franchise that made you who you are are gave you a living and a sort of Fame. I don't feel sorry, the guy digging ditches for a living still has to dig ditches, whether he complains or not about it to make money you do what you must.

Gamers I will say have terrible entitlement tantrams but games do have a right to get a well made game, product, that is what they expect, if you call a game a rpg it better be one and not some hack and slash action crap with absolutely nothing that lends credance to it being an RPG, Diablo 3 is a great example of paying for a product that was not as advertised nor what the series was known for.

You make millions, awwww I feel so bad for you that you can do it over and over again but choose not to.....you don't deserve your customers pure and simple.
 
Wow too many people need to play some more indie titles. I can think of way better things to do with my time when watch this. Even if they actually had something to show. Also I would suspect that the vast majority of the people watching this stream was in a small corner of their second or third monitor.
 
I read an interview where they were saying they were tired of making ES games......as a gamer and a fan I get outraged, as a studio publisher you made a franchise that made you who you are are gave you a living and a sort of Fame. I don't feel sorry, the guy digging ditches for a living still has to dig ditches, whether he complains or not about it to make money you do what you must.

Not really. The guy can get a different job. These guys can work on different projects. it's like expecting an author to write the same book every time. Works often, not exclusively though. I'd certainly rather that a game designer poured their heart and soul into a project they wanted to make, rather than went through the motions and half-arsedly made something because they were expected to.

Gamers I will say have terrible entitlement tantrams but gamers do have a right to get a well made game, product, that is what they expect,

Did you forget the beginning of your sentence by the time you wrote the end of it?
 
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