Fallout 4 just rolled out its Anniversary Edition a few weeks after Bethesda's big Fallout Day stream, and yeah... it is not the victory lap they probably had in mind. The update and the new Creation Club-based DLC dropped alongside it, and the whole thing has quickly turned into a headache: Steam reviews calling it a disaster, timelines full of crash memes, and a chorus of players asking what happened. The good news: Bethesda knows people are upset and is actually saying something about it.
So what went wrong?
The new Anniversary Edition bundles fresh Creation Club content into the now 10-year-old RPG, but the launch has been rocky. Beyond stability issues, the biggest early problem is a nasty ownership bug where content some players already paid for suddenly shows up as unpurchased. That is confusing at best and potentially expensive if you do not notice and rebuy something you already own.
Bethesda says they found the culprit
Community manager Jessica Clark told fans on Bethesda's Discord that the team identified the issue behind the DLC not being recognized. A fix is in the works, with more details promised once they have them. Her note has been making the rounds online, including on Reddit.
"We have discovered the cause for an issue some players were experiencing, where content they bought recently was no longer being recognized as 'owned'... The team is currently working to resolve this issue, and we will share more details as soon as we are able."
Players are not exactly reassured
Some folks took the news with a shrug and a joke: "It is okay, they are gonna fix it on the next re-release." Others are more hopeful: "Thank God," one player said, adding that they want the fix to hit the Creation Kit too, because the same problem is happening there. That part is a very nerdy, behind-the-scenes wrinkle, but it matters for modders and anyone tinkering under the hood.
Where I am with it
As someone who generally roots for Bethesda (I know, I know), I am parking this one for now. I am skipping the Anniversary Edition, the update that came with it, and the new DLC until the dust settles. Best-case scenario, this eventually gets the kind of cleanup Skyrim's Anniversary Edition ended up with.
File under: context that explains a lot
On a related note, Todd Howard recently admitted Fallout 4's cinematic dialogue system never really clicked, even after the team spent forever trying to make it work. His take: it "really did not resonate." Different issue, same pattern: big swings, sometimes messy results.