I don’t usually write blogs for Sillies, but this one is warranted, because I would like to stop reading headlines and seeing Bethesda involved in yet another stupid PR disaster.
I like Bethesda. They have given me a lot of fantastic games. So the last month and a half of mistake after mistake have been hard to watch, as a fan of their previous work. From the rocky Fallout 76 launch, to the canvas bag problem, to the shitty customer service response to the canvas bag problem, to the price gouging holiday cosmetic items, and now this Nuka Dark packaging thing.
And let’s be clear: I imagine this rum is a licensed product. I doubt Bethesday decided to get into the booze game. Bethesda sold a company the right to use Fallout branding to make this rum, and so the garbage packaging is, technically, on the licensee. But, Fallout is Bethesda’s brand, and Bethesda is responsible for protecting that brand, and, frankly, they are not doing a great job of it right now. They’ve squandered a lot of fan goodwill over the last month and… I’d just like them to stop.
I agree. As a major fan I am sad to see this play out as it has. I am also glad I decided to wait to see how 76 was before buying it.
Nothing any game company does this year will beat the monumental statement of one particular company: “Don’t you guys have phones?”. 😉 With this little statement every other company is excused this year. 😛
I feel that incident was just them not reading the room and misunderstanding why people were upset about mobile Diablo. I’d point to the mess of the PlayStation Classic as the number one gaming screw up this year. Horribly inaccurate emulation, Mediocre game selection, and 50% of the games from a different region with a different video standard? Sony should be doing so much better.
There have been quite a few gaming companies that have been screwing things up lately. Not even so much that something was necessarily bad (i.e. mobile Diablo) as much as how they chose to present it, and address the response. Like you said, they are burning through a lot of customer good will.
I can’t give Bethesda a pass anymore. They could publish a perfect AAA solid game with roleplaying and everything they have proved they don’t quite understand, nailed perfectly, and I would still wait till it was heavily doscounted. Even then I would be leery of giving them more of my money. 3 was rough and had a lot of issues, New Vegas was joy with glitches (but then again they liscensed it to obsidian and the glitches were the engine, so partial credit?), And 4… Nuance is not what they do well, world building is more than landscaping, enriching the… Read more »
Just get over it, get over your fanboydom, Bethesda and Blizzard are now huge corporations and they don’t need to give a damn about you anymore. If you want developers that care about you, play Open Transport Tycoon and GZDoom. Though Graf Zahl can be quite a jerk too xD
Fanboyism suggests a willingness to support them no matter what faults or missteps they exhibit. That clearly isn’t the case. A corporation may not need to “care” about us on a personal level, but they need to care about the perception of their company and their product. And Bethesda has spent decades building and cultivating an image as a AAA game developer that produces big, epic games and works to make something special. They steward a couple of franchises that people are very invested in, and the two go hand-in-hand to create the sales that corporations do care about. So… Read more »
I for one, pretty much stopped caring about Bethesda after the disasters that were Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
Both are buggy as hell, and I even decided to buy New Vegas for the PS3 back then, instead of PC, because I thought, hey, the hardware is the same for everyone, right? There’s no way you would get a bug because of hardware conflict then.
Guess I was wrong…
Fallout 3 is pretty polarizing because, like Fallout 4 after it, it’s a generally weak game with some memorable moments. New Vegas…I initially stayed away from that game for a while for the very reasons you mentioned as it was brought up in every single review of the game. The game has been fixed now between official and fan patches but even with its imperfect state it’s still an incredible game. Very few game settings are as lived in and well-realized as the Mojave Wasteland and the writing for both the story and dialogue is fantastic. Bethesda had probably their… Read more »
Oh, I can agree with you on that, the story of New Vegas (the parts that I played) felt amazing.
It really felt like a successor to Fallout and Fallout 2. But then again, the game got fixed with patches and mods made by the players, not Bethesda, so again, fuck them.
I’m not sure I entirely get the guy in the video’s complaint. After all the obviously plastic bottle pictured in the advertising that he showed matched the obviously plastic outer shell that shipped. I’m not sure how anyone would order that and expect it to be a glass bottle or something? Maybe they saw the price and thought it must be something better than what is pictured?
The video didn’t come out until after it was shipped. When these people placed their order, based on the wording, the picture and the pricetag, it was assumed the bottle would be an actual bottle. Not just a plastic snap-on case over a bottle. So its not really the display piece people were expecting.
Fallout 76 has been such a series of blunder after blunder that I can no longer completely dismiss the possibility that for some reason, this whole thing is a Producers-esque purposeful failure.
… frankly i do not understand why people are so angry about fallout 76. I have only seen 2 serious bugs and Bethesda patched them. They were not even game breaking, I just had to leave 2 quest alone until they were patched. Yes the first BETA session was quite a let down. I spend 3,5 hours redownloading the game. But with the help of my trusty alarm clock i manage to catch 3 hours of sleep and to get in half an hour of game play that session – and it was quite fun. I heard about the Power… Read more »
Honestly though, im not even sure Fallout 76 can be saved or anything, not helping Bethesda’s rep at all. Unless they were to turn a full 180 and add humans/ghouls/etc with a serious quantity of new quests/etc then there’s nothing really they could do to bring players back to it. Ive played it for just under 80 hours and managed to complete pretty much everything in it (including killing the ‘end’boss several times) and all i can think is that theres nowhere else to go. Both in world, and in experience and gear progression. Not really any better loot for… Read more »
I’d be hard pressed to say if Bethesda or Blizzard have screwed up the most recently