Bethesda in its infinite wisdom made a new premium leather Fallout 76 jacket available. Internet users the world over quickly balked at the leather jackets, taking to Twitter to mock Bethesda and joke about the company’s continued cynicism.
For starters, the new “Vault 76 premium leather jacket” is $276, which is rather expensive for video game merchandise. That being said, it’s not overly expensive for a leather jacket, as they often cost hundreds of dollars, but they don’t look ghastly. The Fallout 76 jacket mimics the style of Vault jumpsuits with blue leather trimmed with gold and a large golden “76” on the back. The jacket also comes in a Fallout 76 bag, and if you remember a different bag controversy from a few months ago this should be familiar to you.
The official Fallout Twitter account announced the jacket yesterday to mockery. The top reply tweet sums up the faith its critics have in it.
https://twitter.com/ANSISPURINS/status/1088180449766268929
Dozens of tweets make similar jokes, hearkening back to problems Bethesda faced when the Fallout 76 collector’s edition shipped with poor-quality nylon bags. Making matters worse for the Fallout 76 jacket, Bethesda deleted an earlier version of the tweet that received flak from Twitter users.
https://twitter.com/OrionTheLegend/status/1088185165254283264
In a way, the nearly $300 leather jacket makes sense for the story of Fallout 76. The online-only Fallout game drew cautious excitement leading into its beta period, which quickly devolved into a mess of bugs and poor quality. Upon the game’s release, glitches and problems continued to persist and the game was panned critically. The collector’s edition bag, security leak, massive updates that fixed next-to-nothing, and other problems have turned Fallout 76 into the laughing stock of the games industry.
The Fallout 76 jacket continues Bethesda’s trend of trying to profit off of fans of the series with overpriced and underwhelming products. A lot of people seem fed up with Bethesda’s handling of the game and surrounding marketing, especially as Bethesda doesn’t seem to be learning from its mistakes. Hopefully this is the end of Bethesda’s cynical phase of self-aggrandizing and posturing, and the company goes back to making good games.
[via PC Gamer]
