Fallout games continue seeing big player jumps after the TV series’ success

Enlarge / Seeing power armor in the Fallout series inspired many players to jump back into their own suits (and start stockpiling fusion cores). (credit: Amazon/MGM Studios)

Long-time Fallout fans are used to long waits between titles, and, depending on their preferences, inconsistent results. But when Amazon’s Fallout series showed up on Prime and absolutely nailed it, it spurred a lot of players to crack open their libraries and commence some post-apocalyptic replaying. And maybe first-time playing, too.

Fallout 76, the online multiplayer title that is the most recent full release, saw perhaps the biggest delta. The game hit its all-time peak of 43,887 simultaneous players on Wednesday, April 17, according to SteamCharts, roughly one week after the Amazon series’ debut. For the year leading up to that peak, Fallout 76 had hovered around 7,000-10,000 players through most of 2024, and then jumped after the series’ debut. Of course, that number only counts PC players, and only those on Steam; the game, which launched simultaneously on consoles, and is available on Microsoft’s Game Pass, likely has many more players.

SteamDB, another Steam stats tracker, suggested on X (formerly Twitter) that the Fallout game series as a whole had more than doubled its concurrent player count by April 14.