With the addition of the Wastelanders DLC to Fallout 76, you may be tempted to either return to the game or buy it for the first time. A big part of modern gaming, and a constant concern for players, is if a game supports cross-play, the ability to play with your friends on other platforms.
Unfortunately, Fallout 76 does not support this function. According to Bethesda, back when the game launched first launched in Nov. 2018, cross-play was something that they were interested in adding to the game in the future, although it wasn’t viewed as a critical feature according to Pete Hines, Bethesda’s senior vice president of marketing. In a tweet, he described cross-play as not being on their radar as they focused on launching the game.
But that was all the way back in 2018 I hear you say, and that is true. However, Wastelanders has arrived, the game’s most significant update yet, and there is still no cross-play functionality, so at this point, it is probably safe to assume that it will never come to the game.
There could be any number of reasons for this, from a lack of resources to a lack of desire, to a simple lack of interest on behalf of the developers.
Todd Howard, Bethesda’s head-honcho mentioned before the game’s release that they would love to have cross-play as a feature, but pointed to Sony as a reason it wasn’t going to happen, describing them as not “being as helpful as we want them to be”. Even this reasoning is gone at this point, as Sony has since shifted gears on cross-play, supporting the feature on any game that wishes to have it on their platform.
At this point, it is probably best to just bury those dreams of cross-play somewhere in the Wasteland.
