Fallout 76 nets 20 million players as Todd Howard assures franchise will continue

Fallout 76 has reached a new milestone in the form of 20 million players. The shared world shooter's success comes after it grew to 17 million players back last December.

As with other games in the series, its success can be owed to renewed interest thanks to Prime Video's Fallout show. In mid-April, basically every game in the series had a big surge of players; for 76, the show gave it its highest-ever peak of Steam players.

Even before the show, though, Fallout 76 had turned itself around significantly from its crunch-heavy, tumultuous launch in 2018. As it stands, it's done a significant job in keeping the series around until an eventual new game comes around.

Fallout will return...eventually

Talking to Variety, Bethesda frontman Todd Howard noted Fallout 76's has been "kind of been sneaky popular for a while. But not to this level, and it’s just been really great for the for the whole studio."

Per the outlet, daily players for the wider franchise have finally surged past the 5 million mark. In late April, the series was just shy of that number, and Fallout 76 was seeing 1 million players per day.

Howard noted the "4-6x increase" for daily players, depending on which game, and called it "beyond anything" in his 30-year industry tenure. The show can't help but be a "big thing" for Fallout since it drew in lapsed and wholly new players.

Game-wise, Howard stopped short of saying anything about Fallout 5 or a different game project. But he confirmed future games are being planned for the series, and asked for some grace since "games take a good five-ish years" to make.

"Nothing to talk about right now," he concluded, "but we’re always planning."