Fallout 4’s First Beta Patch for PC Expected to Drop Next Week

Bethesda has pushed out a blog update on Fallout 4 to thank fans for the game’s incredible reception and explain how they intend to respond to the widespread bug reports. The developers are planning to go with a scheme similar to the one they used for Skyrim which means they’ll release a beta patch on Steam first, followed by an official release on Steam and then on consoles.

The first beta patch is expected to drop next week:

It’s true that the freedom our games offer you can lead to unintentional consequences that are sometimes bad, when the game combines too many unexpected elements at once. Given the scale and complexity of the systems at work, especially when allowing you to build your own settlements, we’re happy that Fallout 4 is our most robust and solid release ever, and we’d like to thank our amazing QA staff who worked as hard as anyone to break the game so we could fix it during development. But a hundred testers will never replicate the many millions playing the game now, and we’re hard at work addressing the top issues.

Our process for updating the game will include releasing a beta patch on Steam, followed by full release on PC, then release on the consoles. This process has worked well for us in the past and allows us to get more fixes out faster. Expect to see more updates, that are smaller and more frequent, than a few big ones. This allows us to make sure each fix is working right, as any change can have unintentional side effects in a game this huge. We expect the first beta patch to be up next week.