Breakdown
- When Fallout 3 was first announced, Bethesda developers used to get death threats.
- Bethesda had to hire a security guard for the first time, but the employees were kept unaware.
- Bethesda was successful in reviving the struggling franchise despite all this pushback.
It’s hard to believe, but the developers of Fallout 3 revealed they used to receive death threats in the early days of the game when it was announced. Although Bethesda’s Fallout franchise is now loved by many, especially after the Amazon hit TV show, apparently things were not the same back in the day.
Bethesda bought the Fallout franchise in 2007, when it was on the verge of collapse, and announced their plans to make Fallout 3. It was right after that when they started receiving death threats.
Jonah Lobe, a Bethesda character artist, shared his experience of the events that occurred back then in his recent video, “Designing the Creatures for Fallout 3 & 4: A Developer Retrospective.”
“When it was announced that Bethesda was going to take on the Fallout franchise, there was a lot of excitement, a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of death threats,” Lobe said.
“I know it might shock you to learn that not every gamer is a wonderful person. And Fallout, I’m sorry to say, had more than its average share of less-than-pleasant fans." he said. "To this small but very vocal community, our attempt to resurrect the franchise was nothing less than a sacrilege. For the first time ever, Bethesda had to hire a security guard,” he added.
In his talk with Kotaku, Lobe explained that the toxicity related to the game was found in places like “No Mutants Allowed," a Fallout fan site. These are usually inhabited by the "OG" fans of the original games who have a weird cult-like obsession with the style and atmosphere of the first two titles. To each their own, but taking it to the point of death threats is ridiculous.
He also added that he and his colleagues at Bethesda were not well informed about the death threats and the security needs, as they were shielded from the majority of them.
Regardless of the so-called unfriendly behavior of the fans, Bethesda was successful in reviving the dead Fallout franchise, which, to date, is one of the best selling best-sellingRPGs in the world.
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