BethesdaPity poor Fallout 76. Bethesda’s much-maligned attempt at a multiplayer Fallout game just goes from weakness to weakness, and the latest development is bound to get fans in a tizzy.
Despite Bethesda’s insistence that the microtransactions in the game would only ever be cosmetic, it sounds a lot like the exact opposite of that will now be happening.
Redditor JesMaine recently posted a list of changes coming to Fallout 76 in an upcoming patch, including lunchboxes which seem to contain various player buffs.
The lunchbox’s effects will apparently include non cosmetic bonuses like additional damage, increased carry weight, and XP boosts, according to the changelog compiled by despotak.
Of course, there’s every chance that these lunchboxes can simply be found in-game, but it is worth noting that lines of code related to these items are tagged with “ATX:, which according to JesMaine is the “Bethesda Atom Shop profile.”
With that in mind, you can be forgiven for assuming that these lunchboxes will be premium boosters that you can nab from the store in exchange for Atoms (Fallout 76’s in-game currency).
Lunchboxes have previously appeared in Fallout Shelter, and just like a loot box, you can grab skins, resources, weapons, and currency out of them. As such, I’d be surprised if they weren’t pretty much exactly the same in Fallout 76.
Bethesda’s Pete Hines had previously said that Atoms would be easy to obtain just by playing the game, and that they could only be used for cosmetic items.
Unfortunately, plenty of players have reported hitting a wall in terms of how many Atoms they can actually make in-game after a certain period, and there’s a Reddit thread here in which people are complaining about the price of Atoms, as well as the the items from the game’s store.
While these changes haven’t been officially confirmed, it seems like the next baffling step Bethesda would take during this descent into madness.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.