I am well acquainted with buggy Bethesda releases. When I bought Fallout: New Vegas on release day, there was a DirectX (I think) bug that made the game unplayable for two weeks. Well, unless you downloaded a fan patch that resolved the issue within a few hours. But it took Bethesda two weeks to push out an official patch to fix things.

So I was ready for Fallout 76 to be a clown fiesta.

What I wasn’t ready for was Bethesda’s own launcher to immediately delete the preloaded game.

The amusing part is that I saw it happen almost in real-time. I was playing Stardew Valley, saw that it was about 7:30pm, and decided to go ahead and try to log in. What I saw was the Bethesda launcher halfway through downloading the 48 GB game… again. I had already preloaded everything the weekend before, so I thought this odd. Was it re-verifying the files? I opened up the Fallout 76 folder and, nope, there’s already 48 GB worth of files there. So I canceled the download. Then the Fallout 76 folder disappeared.

This was not an isolated incident.

In browsing Reddit threads and looking for answers, it was suggested people download a program that can find and restore deleted items. So I did so. Sure enough, it found all the deleted files. “Great, let me hit Restore!” As it turns out, this program can restore files… but not in their original folder structure. I basically had a new folder on my desktop filled with 48 GB of loose files. I found that if I turned the program back on, I could see the folder structure of the original files. So all I had to do with manually create and name dozens of folders, move the files into them, and hope for the best.

Yeah, fuck all that. Imma go play Stardew Valley instead.

The preload debacle is just the tip of the iceberg, by the way. It’s my own fault, but I also hadn’t realized that “Beta” meant “explicit Beta schedules,” as in you can only play during certain windows. Bethesda is apparently extending tonight’s beta due to yesterday’s shitshow, but there is still limited time to play test the game.

On top of that, there is the usual nonsense like how disabling V-sync gives you in-engine speed hacks, there is no Push-to-Talk button on PC so everyone has a hot mic all the time, lack of basic PC options for keybindings and graphical settings, and so on. That’s the sort of thing we come to expect from Bethesda, but we still buy their games. I mean, we do so because ultimately the games are precisely fun enough to eventually overlook this bullshit, but come on. Where is the competition?

I dunno. I was mad about it for a while, but deep down I’m really just mad at myself for allowing myself to believe that, maybe, this time, a Bethesda game won’t be a total shitshow right from the start. Do any of those project managers or coders over there feel embarrassed over this shit? Or are they too busy rolling around in piles of cash to care?

These thoughts occupied my mind for about five minutes, before turning to figure out whether I had, in fact, planted any Blueberries this season. If I hadn’t I needed to get on that shit because otherwise I might not be able to unlock the Greenhouse on my farm before the first winter. Priorities, man.