It's difficult to fathom how this fail train has any steam left, but Bethesda's signature blend of audacity and hubris has once again made victims of its players. This time, it's the relatively small contingent of loyal fans that are keeping Fallout 76 alive while subsequently being extorted for more money. This on its own is egregious, but to make matters worse - a sizable number of players are reporting some pretty exceptional issues with Fallout 1st's "premium" benefits.
For starters, some are reporting that the private servers - you know, arguably the biggest reason why anyone would pay $100 a year for a desolate wasteland of a game, both figuratively and literally - are not as private as the word would imply. As the story goes, these supposedly new servers feature dead NPCs and areas that have somehow already been looted, which seems to suggest that Bethesda simply assigned repurposed servers to players without resetting them beforehand.
Additionally, players with expansive friend's list (such as those who like to role-play as merchants) are having issues with an apparent lack of control over who is allowed in their p-r-i-v-a-t-e servers.
While frustrating, at least those reported issues aren't actively doing harm to the player experience. At least, not quite as much as an in-game storage container that is literally consuming items and erasing them from existence. I'm talking about the "Scrap Box", which is supposed to be another notable benefit of being a Fallout 1st member. Using the Scrap Box, players would have a place to store their scraps. That is, if it actually worked.
Bethesda has, for the most part, gone silent since the almost immediate backlash resulting from Fallout 1st's announcement. With these new developments, it would seem that their hole is only going to get deeper while our expectations for an appropriately substantive explanation increases. Whatever is happening over at Bethesda, it's a mess that is going to take some time to clean up.
