Bethesda Insists, Again, that Fallout 76 Won't Be Pay-to-win

Fallout 76 has “arrived” in a manner of speaking, with an open demo taking place earlier, which had, um… extremely mixed results, both from a gameplay and a technical standpoint. But Bethesda plans to keep backing this horse all the way to the end of the race, and Bethesda's Pete Hines, over at PAX Australia, decided that he could use his stage at the conference to assure people, yet again, that despite having a paid currency, Fallout 76 won’t have “crippling greed” as one of its major faults.
 

"If you don't want to spend money in the Atomic shop for cosmetic stuff you don't have to. We give you a shitload of Atoms just for playing the game. Folks that want to spend money on whatever the hell it is because they don't have enough Atoms, they can, but it's not, 'I'm now better playing against other players because I spent money.' It's not pay-to-win. And it's not loot crates."

 
By most accounts, Atoms were pretty easy to earn in the earlier beta, with people earning a steady supply by completing in-game achievements. That said, that influx of atoms could always be reduced for the final launch, and it’s undeniable that the longer you play the game and more achievements you complete, the fewer opportunities you’ll have to earn atoms in the future. It’s a pretty standard game design ploy to give you lots of a premium currency at first, then slowly wean you off it.

Plus, of course, no studio will include microtransactions and not want you to buy them.

That said, where it matters – the gameplay – it seems by all accounts he’s on the money. Post-launch DLC is supposed to be free for everyone, and while atoms can be spent on cosmetics, no one has been able to spend them on actual upgrades.

But still. We’ll have to see.