Welcome to the wasteland, Vault Dwellers. Bethesda's Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 are bringing post-nuclear adventures to the cloud. These highly acclaimed action role-playing games lead 10 new titles joining GeForce NOW this week. Announced as coming to GeForce NOW at CES, Honkai: Star Rail is targeting a release this quarter. Stay tuned for future updates.

Vault Into the Cloud
Adventurers needed, whether for mapping the irradiated wasteland or shaping the fate of humanity. Embark on a journey through ruins of the post-apocalyptic Commonwealth in Fallout 4. As the sole survivor of Vault 111, navigate a world destroyed by nuclear war, make choices to reshape the wasteland and rebuild society one settlement at a time. With a vast, open world, dynamic crafting systems and a gripping storyline, the game offers an immersive single-player experience that challenges dwellers to emerge as beacons of hope for humanity's remnants.

Straight from the vault, we're thrilled to unveil the all-new Xbox Wireless Controller - Fallout, ready for you exclusively at Xbox Design Lab! Get ready to dive into the immersive world of one of gaming's most beloved franchises. This Fallout-themed controller is a heartfelt tribute to the iconic character from the series we all adore, Vault Boy, showcasing each of his unique S.P.E.C.I.A.L. traits. Secure your spot in the wasteland and get your hands on this epic addition to your gaming arsenal today!

This controller is designed with a collage of some of the most iconic Vault Boy perk icons from throughout the franchise's history. The white background with the grey etchings of the character allows the design to incorporate all these memorable moments, while still leaving space for you to add all of the colors you love! The blue and yellow colored Vault Boy and Vault-Tec decal surrounding the Xbox button fully tie in the aesthetic that visually represents the post-apocalyptic games. And if you look close enough, you can also find some hidden Easter eggs in the collage that you don't want to miss!

Just in time for the highly anticipated new Amazon Prime Fallout series, we're dropping the Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology. The Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology contains seven incredible Fallout games and will launch on April 11. Pre-order yours today! Whether you're new to Bethesda Game Studios' Fallout, or this isn't your first time stepping out of the vault, get a crash course in wasteland survival from the very beginning of the award-winning role-playing game series that blasted onto the scene in 1997. Just in time for the highly anticipated new Amazon Prime Fallout series, we're dropping the Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology. The Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology contains seven incredible Fallout games and will launch on April 11.

Whether you're new to Bethesda Game Studios' Fallout, or this isn't your first time stepping out of the vault, get a crash course in wasteland survival from the very beginning of the award-winning role-playing game series that blasted onto the scene in 1997. Inspired by Fallout 76's in-game perk cards, the Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Anthology contains seven collectible cards, stored in the core of a miniature bomb (though disarmed, the painted mini-nuke features an explosive sound effect!). On these S.P.E.C.I.A.L. cards, Vault-Tec's fan-favorite Vault Boy makes the best use of his Charisma points to depict the core skills of any exceptional vault-dweller, from brute Strength to sheer Luck.

Players of Bethesda's Fallout 76 have been met with a relatively underwhelming game from the very beginning, starting with the number of bugs and puzzling design decisions that shipped with it. Since then, Fallout 76 has definitely become more polished; however, like any good Bethesda game (and one as expansive and with as many systems as a Fallout, it has to be said), Fallout 76 just recently introduced what has to be one of the most aggravating bugs of all time with the introduction of its Wastelanders expansion.

The expansion, which has been met as a much-needed step towards the game feeling like a proper Fallout, introduces Wastelanders, or NPCs that actually go on about their business, and are available to accompany you in a variety of missions. The Wasteland now seems a lot less empty... Though thanks to the introduced bug, you know might wish it to be the desolate place it always has been. You see, players are reporting that when they die alongside one such NPC, they sometimes end up looting the player character's corpse... For their very best weapon. Which they then proceed in using when you respawn. And which you can't get back, because you can't pickpocket them, or actually kill them - they just go to sleep. If this was a feature, this might've been a cautionary tale in living in a post-apocalyptic setting where every man fends for himself... As it stands, though, it's just a particularly wicked bug that can undo hours upon hours of grinding. Look after the break for a video that shows just that moment of disillusionment.

Bethesda had concerned a few people last year when they had announced most of their new games would be available on the PC platform only via their own store and launcher, at least initially. People were quick to speculate whether this was Bethesda wanting a bigger share of the pie than Steam would allow, which is hilarious in hindsight with everything Epic Game Store related since then, and also whether this was because they were worried that Fallout 76, the first of these games affected by said decision, would have generate refunds galore on Steam as a result of bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Today Bethesda took to social media to make good on their promise, saying that all their upcoming games will be simultaneously available on both Steam and the Bethesda Store, including Rage 2, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot.

Interestingly, it will still be a while before Fallout 76 will make its way on Steam, which does not help its cause as far as far as having a depreciating player base goes. The move in general also plays into the larger dynamics of PC game stores, with game exclusives suddenly becoming a valid point of consideration as the competition from Epic Games heats up. It is also interesting to see how few complaints there are online of how these games are not available on, say, the Epic Games Store, or Discord, or GoG, and points further to the loyalty-factor of the populace complaining about exclusives on PC game stores in 2019.

While Fallout 76 may have (read: has) come out of the gates to generally poor rception, Bethesda Softworks has been hard at work trying to bring the game up to speed to the potential of the Fallout series - at least, as much potential as there is to scrounge for in this shared/world rendition of it. This has worked, according to Bethesda, through a dedication to "(...) improve performance, detect new exploits, and make the experience smoother for everyone. There's still work to do, but we're happy to report that game and server stability has increased over 300% since launch." To celebrate a perceived new state of the nation, Bethesda has just revealed their plans for the game thorugh a roadmap that spans the entirety of 2019.

It seems the game will be following a Seasonal content delivery, as there is a Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter separation for content - free content, that is. The first content update, dubbed "Wild Appalachia", will be coming out throughout Spring 2019, featuring a series of new quests, features, events, crafting systems and more starting on March 12 and appearing over several weeks. Summer will see the arrival of of the "Nuclear Winter" content update, which seems like a tongue-in-cheek proposition. "Wastelanders", dropping this Fall, will be the single most comprehensive amount of content, according to Bethesda, with "a new main questline, new factions, new events, new features and even more surprises." Check out after the break for the full announced features for the Spring Update, "Wild Appalachia".

ZADAK, in association with NVIDIA Taiwan, wowed visitors at the opening of the Taipei Game Show 2019, presenting a scratch build from up and coming Taiwanese modder AK. Inspired by the popular Fallout 76 PC game, the Pip-Boy mod is composed of leather, aluminum and 3D-printed acrylics. It marks the first collaboration between ZADAK and NVIDIA Taiwan, showcasing the flagship MOAB II Water-cooled PC from ZADAK, and the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti gaming graphics card.

Fallout 76 has quickly been deemed one of the gaming failures of 2018, with the world of Fallout falling prey to a multitude of factors. You can count Bethesda's game engine and it's infinite amount of bugs, blatant misinformation in marketing campaigns, and monetization, monetization, monetization.

It would seem that in a bid to win back player's graces, Bethesda will be offering PC, PS4 and Xbox players of Fallout 76 that logged in to play the game during 2018 a copy of their Fallout Classic Collection, which includes Fallout, Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, and Fallout 2. It's a holiday gift given in a pleading position, so to speak. An announcement that Bethesda would be developing a new game engine would likely be better received by the community as an apology, though.

It seems many companies just never learn, you would think with Bethesda's various controversies surrounding Fallout 76 that they would have taken a step back and reevaluated their position. You would also think that their first decision would not have been to add more horrendously overpriced downloadable content to their Atom shop. However, instead of making an educated decision Bethesda continues to march straight for the cliff like a group of lemmings.

What did they do this time you ask? Well, they decided to offer more absurdly priced bits of cosmetic gear. First up was their Holiday Emote bundle for 1200 Atoms which is 50% off the regular 2400 Atoms. Next is the Mr. and Mrs. Claus outfits listed for 2000 Atoms, down from 3000. Finally theres the Red Rocket Mega Sign for 1400 Atoms. All told buying those three featured items from the Atom Shop would run you about 4600 Atoms or $40 which is coincidently the highest price the game sells for currently. It would appear Bethesda really wants to earn back their development costs on this one.

After what seemed to be a series of never ending bad news concerning Bethesda's latest game, Fallout 76 received a major patch today that aims to improve the gaming experience in more ways than one. For PC users, a welcome addition comes in the form of the much-needed FOV (field of view) slider that has already helped tackle some complaints as seen online after launch. This comes along with a depth of field slider to allow further customization of the in-game view, which should also have a graphics performance effect depending on your hardware and DOF setting.

More importantly, Bethesda Game Studios has finally conceded that their current C.A.M.P system was far too broken. In particular, users were noticing their camp was lost entirely in between online sessions if someone else occupied the same space/location. This meant that a lot of resources were suddenly lost, and brought the online, multiplayer-only aspect of the game to be more similar to, say, State of Decay wherein players had to treat individual game sessions as possibly not having a point of resumption anymore. It added unnecessary frustration on top of what is frankly a bad video game by all records, and this is before we even get to the various bugs and monetary mishaps the game has seen since. Today's patch is a positive step, however, and hopefully this is one of many, many more that are needed before the game gets any real traction on the PC or console platforms alike. A full list of changes can be seen in the source linked in the full post.

With the release of Fallout 76 a week ago, Bethesda continues the tradition of releasing buggy games that are full of glitches and issues. These problems are always expected to come from Bethesda; typically the game is still fun however unlike previous titles, Fallout 76 is has been universally panned by gamers and critics alike. At this point, some of the bugs, exploits, and problems are just hilariously bad. Tools such as Nukacrypt are already available online, using only a partial code it can decrypt the in-game nuclear launch codes drastically speeding up the overall process. Keeping with nuke theme, players working together were able to crash a Bethesda server by launching three nukes simultaneously. There are more glaring examples but when you add them to the laundry list of problems its begins to look pretty bad even for Bethesda.

Then there is Brogadyn on Reddit, who for a week now has been stuck in a semi-god mode. Usually that would be something to rejoice about but in this case, has caused many issues with the game's mechanics as the player is seen to have 0 HP. Worse yet, Bethesda has been dragging their feet when it comes to looking into the problem with Brogadyn speculating that they could reproduce the issue based on the circumstances in which the issue occurred. When you consider all this along with the general bugs, glitches, and problems that are typically a minor annoyance, you end up with a game that likely should have stayed in beta.

SCDKey is an online games and software vendor that sells genuine license keys for a large selection of games, and software, including Microsoft Windows and MS Office. The vendor just launched a gargantuan Black Friday sale of games and software keys; with the likes of Windows 10 Pro OEM selling for $14, Office 2016 for $35 (permanent, not subscription), and Microsoft products marked down by as much as 85%.

You can also get the latest AAA game keys on SCDKey at a minimum discount of 12%. Take "Fallout 76," for example, which is going for $57.48 against a Steam price of $68.30. The site is now giving away monthly, quarterly, and annual subscriptions to its Members Zone. As an SCDKey Premium member, you have access to discount-coupons that can shave off anywhere between 30% to 80% on the already marked down prices, letting you get away with genuine keys at unreal prices. With each purchase you get bonus points that you can redeem in future purchases as alternative for real money. The site uses PayPal, so your payment instruments stay shielded from the vendor. I've already bought a Windows 10 Pro license along with a discount coupon for $12. How much do you want to spend this Winter gaming season?

SCDKey Black Friday Mega Sale

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM CD-KEY GLOBAL ($14)TechPowerUp readers get exclusive discount coupons.

NVIDIA today released the GeForce 416.94 WHQL "Game Ready" drivers. These come optimized for "Fallout 76," "Hitman 2," and "Battlefield V." NVIDIA re-listing Battlefied V, a game it already optimized for with v416.81 could mean the company may have improved performance for the game. NVIDIA confirmed that a game patch will drop "soon" through Origin, which will add NVIDIA RTX support, more so because Microsoft has resumed rolling out Windows 10 1809. The drivers also add 3D Vision profiles for "Hitman 2" and "Fallout 76." A minor bug that caused lagging on Windows desktop with GeForce GTX 780 has also been fixed. Grab the driver from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 416.94 WHQL

The Change-log follows.

AMD has released today the Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.11.1 beta drivers. These drivers bring a host of fixes and performance improvements to a number of titles including, Hitman 2, Battlefield V and Fallout 76. In the case of Hitman 2 the Radeon RX 580 sees a performance uplift of 3% at 1920x1080 compared to the Adrenalin 18.10.2 drivers. Meanwhile, Battlefield V sees performance improvements of 9% and 8% respectively on the Radeon RX 580 and RX Vega 64. It is likely other GPUs based on the Vega and Polaris architectures will benefit from these drivers as well. Fallout 76 gets official support with this release, however, no other information was made available as to what AMD has done for testing with Bethesda's latest offering other than to confirm that it works.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.11.1 BetaThe change-log follows.

In what is sure to become a controversial response to player feedback, Bethesda has gone out to clarify some questions users might have regarding particular features in the release of Fallout 76. For one, it seems that the FOV will be limited to the anemic, defaulty 80º - a decision that simply can't be understood in the wake of recent game releases and ultrawide screen support existence. Even if one does not consider that, 80º FOV still remains a very limited view ratio for a good percentage of users.

The other, definitely more... debatable.. decision is the "Always On" feature for voice chat. Instead of the much more private "Push to Talk" option - which allows anyone with a good sense of privacy to not talk to the entire world while using their nose hair trimmer, or eating Pringles, or listening to (insert your favorite kind of music here) - Bethesda says that in order for the world to feel really "alive", an always-on chat will definitely nudge people towards communicating. We'll see how hard that one decision turns out for the game world. It'll be a great immersion experience, I'm sure. You can read the entire Bethesda blog response after the break.

Well, I suppose we were warned about bugs in the Fallout 76 Beta in advance but no one could have predicted it would be this.. freeing. So much so that a not insignificant fraction of participants in the Fallout 76 beta found their storage drives to be free of all 50 GB of downloaded files without notice. It got to a point where the Bethesda support account on Twitter put out a spectacular tweet saying "PC #Fallout76 B.E.T.A. players: We are aware of an issue with the client and are investigating. Do not click any buttons on the client for the time being." which has since been deleted. There were understandably upset people, including those on a metered or slow internet plan to whom downloading 50 GB again is a lot to ask for- even assuming they could do so and play again before the original beta period ended.

It must be noted that a beta test is for identifying issues such as this to begin with, and this is not the full game that one has paid for either. Although this bug not being caught until a public beta is still worrying, the public outcry to this bug has been a touch overblown and this is coming from the guy who gave Bethesda some unpleasant news and then some over their treatment of the latest addition to the Fallout game IP. To their credit, Bethesda have extended the beta session, as noted in the image below, to allow for a patch to the launcher client and that should hopefully fix this issue as well. Whether or not they did the right thing by not using Steam as a client is a matter for another discussion, relevant as it is now, and you are welcome to carry it out in the comments section.

Bethesda has revealed the official minimum and recommended specs for gamers looking to dive once again into a post-apocalyptic game setting with Fallout 76. Interestingly, the system requirements call for at least an Intel Core i5-6600K or an AMD Ryzen 3 1300X CPU, both of which are four-core, four-thread processors from yesteryear, paired with 8 GB of system RAM. On the graphics side of the equation, an NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB or an AMD Radeon R9 285 2GB are enough. Storage space continues to be hefty as with most games coming out recently, with this asking for 60 GB on your PC.

The recommended specs are more in-line with what one would expect, even though this game certainly won't be a resource hog by any definition: the 8 GB of of system RAM remain in the recommended specs, but both listed CPUs see an upgrade to an 8-thread part in the form of the Intel Core i7-4790 and the AMD Ryzen 5 1500X. Graphics cards for the recommended experience are being defined as either an Nvidia GTX 970 4GB or an AMD R9 290X 4 GB. It seems the 8 GB system RAM has come here to stay in AAA gaming, folks, and number of required CPU threads has been steadily increasing. Now if only there aren't as many game-breaking bugs as is traditional in a Bethesda game... Especially not cazadors.

Okay, let it all out right now: "A Bethesda game with bugs? Color me shocked!". With that preemptively mentioned, the context here is a little different and worth mentioning. Bethesda took to Twitter via a letter to their fans earlier today, a letter that is trying to keep expectations low when trying out the Fallout 76 early access program, which they call the Break it Early Test Application (B.E.T.A, get it?). The letter goes on to bring up examples of other large games with massive in-game worlds, with Bethesda's own Elder Scrolls and Fallout series brought up as examples. To be more specific, the letter mentions "Given what we're doing with 76, we know we're opening everyone up to all new spectacular issues none of us have encountered. Some we're aware of, such as areas where performance needs to improve with lots of players. Others, we surely don't. We need your help finding them, and advice on what's important to fix."

There is a whole other discussion to be had on how private and public beta programs are now becoming glorified unpaid quality assurance work in the so-called AAA game industry today, and Bethesda in this venture does not do anything particular egregious either. But combined with all the other negative press Fallout 76 has been getting thanks to questionable choices made by the publisher, and also noting that only those who pre-ordered the game get to try out the beta beginning in a short while today, things are looking bleak for the participation numbers in said beta program. If you happened to be one of those participating, please do share your experiences in the comments section on this story.

Bethesda sure is testing their fan base in more ways than one with the upcoming Fallout 76 game. First, we learnt that it was an online experience with no single-player campaign. Then came the news of an exclusive (at least at launch) use of the Bethesda.net launcher rather than Steam for the PC platform. Interest in the game was mediocre at best, if online gaming communities are anything to go by, and today we got to know about the Fallout 76 Platinum Edition that costs a whopping $115 USD but does not even include the actual game!

That's right, Bethesda in their infinite wisdom are selling this alongside the standard $60 edition, a $80 Tricentennial Edition, and an even more expensive $200 Power Armor Edition. The other editions all include the game, because why not, but this $115 edition is sold as a gear and comes with goodies galore for the hardcore Fallout fan. If you wanted to shell out the cash for a guide to the game universe, a collector's case, a numbered art print, mini journals, postcards, maps and more, you can find the link in the source. For everyone else, hold on to your horses and see how the game is received by the media before even deciding if the base game itself is worth it. Bethesda is setting a dangerous precedence here with physical goodies for pre-order based off an online game that is not even out yet, and all we can do with vote with our wallets by keeping them shut.

The ease of digital distribution means companies can always try to maximize their profits by cutting the man in the middle - saving in on any distribution fees that third party would demand for its services. Of course, this is easier said than done, and most small companies wouldn't be able to set up their own digital distribution service - Steam as a platform is a great alternative for these, since it couples simplicity with a grand user base, and Steam's own in-house publicity and user data allows these companies to achieve a much wider audience than they likely would should they try to use their own distribution platform.

Of course, Bethesda isn't a small company, to say the least; that's why it has the resources to pour into its own digital platform, and part of the reason why Fallout 76 won't make it to the PC's leading distribution platform, Steam. In the game F.A.Q., Bethesda has made it clear that Fallout 76 will only be available via Bethesda.net, meaning that users will be left in the cold with some of Steam's exclusive features. Of course, one might argue that those are all peanuts compared to the actual game.

Much has been said and written regarding Fallout 76 already - how Bethesda's online-only approach could be either the best step for the series or the worst. The absence of any singleplayer experience would surely bring Fallout series fans' mind to halt. Loneliness in the face of nuclearized landscapes has always been one of the attractions on this type a game - a world that responds and is "written" only by us.

Bethesda has now released a gameplay trailer for Fallout 76, which seemingly sends a mixed message. It could be just confirmation bias here, but the original intro saying that "most of the others have already gone" and "you come from every walk of life: every race, color and creed" do seem to speak to the multiplayer component of a character creator and a lore-infused way of explaining other players' presence. At the same time, the entire trailer focuses on graphics, the new tech behind landscapes and the new weather and detail system, which allows for up to 16x more graphical assets to be displayed. And the way the creatures of Fallout and West Virginia appear does speak to a single-player approach to combat - for now. We'll see, as Bethesda further pulls the curtains - particularly in the Beta for Fallout 76, which is rumored to be available first on the XBOX family of consoles rather than the PC. Watch the trailer after the break. If you want to know more about the making of Fallout 76 - and get a deeper glimpse at the game and its development - feel free to watch the Noclip video embedded below as well.