Bethesda Promised Refund On Fallout 76, Then Bailed Out The Next Day

Fallout 76

We’re overwhelmed by your response on this news piece. Thank you for reading our article. Consider helping us on Patreon so that we could keep up with latest in video games and continue pushing out good content for the community.


In recent reports, one of many disappointed Fallout 76 players contacted Bethesda for a refund on the disastrous and catastrophic online survival-RPG Fallout 76 (and those aren’t just one man’s words). Although Bethesda promised a refund, they bailed out the next day with an unconvincing excuse.

A lot has been going on with Bethesda and Fallout 76 in general. Underwhelming review scores, disastrous user feedback and an increasing number of refund demands are some of many.

Reddit user ZPKane posted his experience earlier today. He contacted Bethesda for a refund on Fallout 76 since the game ran terribly and connecting to friends was a problem never solved.

Bethesda’s first response was –

“Greetings!

Thank you for contacting the Bethesda Customer Support Team.

Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to begin processing that refund for you right at this moment. There is nothing to worry about though. We’ll begin processing the refund as soon as we can and we’ll reach back out to you via email to let you know once we’ve started that process.

Thank you for your continued interest and support!

Warm Regards,
Bethesda Customer Support

While ZPKane waited for his refund, Bethesda backtracked the issue and sent a follow-up mail –

“Greetings,

Thank you for contacting the Bethesda Support Team. Customers who have downloaded the game are not eligible for a refund. We apologize for the inconvenience. If there is anything else we can assist you with please reply to this email for further assistance. Thank you for your patience

Kind Regards,
Bethesda Support”

On scrolling through Bethesda’s refund policy, I found –

  • If you want to download digital content within the 30-day cancelation period, you must agree to waive your cancelation rights.

This could mean that ZPKane had a digital copy of the game. Although the refund policy strictly describes the cancellation guideline, it is strange for Bethesda to write “processing the refund as soon” in their initial mail. This might have been an automated email and the follow-up mail was sent after proper backtracking and evaluation. We’ll update you with accurate information once the story develops.

In the meantime, Spiel Times has contacted ZPKane and Bethesda for further investigation and if anything develops, we’ll update the article and notify you through our push-notifications.

Fallout 76 has proved itself as the worst Fallout game and most probably one of the worst-performing Triple-A titles of the decade. The game currently stands on a Metacritic rating of 48 for Xbox One, 50 for PlayStation 4 and 55 for PC. On the other side, the user rating is a disappointing 2.7 based on 3015 reviews.

Fallout 76’s base price has also dropped severely since its failure. The game is currently available for purchase at $34.99 on Amazon, i.e., $25 flat discount.

Make sure you subscribe to our push-notifications and never miss an update on Fallout 76. Until next time, Happy Gaming!

19 thoughts on “Bethesda Promised Refund On Fallout 76, Then Bailed Out The Next Day”

      1. Elilla Shadowheart

        The general consumer should be turning around and filing complaints under consumer protection laws. First in most places you can’t waive a right(in this case to a refund). Second a company can’t retroactively say “nope, you can’t.” Third, since many countries are catching up, digital goods now count as a physical product. In turn you can’t be forced to waive refunds, and must be honored.

          1. Elilla Shadowheart

            ToS are interesting, because companies thought they could simply boilerplate away people suing them or demanding redress. It got nastier because they decided to try using them to make people waive rights guaranteed under law. Key thing is, a ToS is a contract and you can’t waive rights in those either.

            Well the bit on consumer rights is going to vary by country. If you’re in the US, you’re going to be hit-or-miss and more hit-or-miss depending on whether or not the state you’re in assigns digital products(software/etc) the same protections as physical products. If you’re in Canada, Europe, UK, Australia, New Zealand, or Japan? You’re covered under various either state/provincial/federal laws. Some of greater or lesser strength.

            The UK absolutely allows the unconditional return of software within I believe 14 days(might be 30). EU laws offer similar protections, and may be more aggressive by country. If you’re in Canada and live in Ontario, BC or Quebec, you’re protected by federal and provincial laws, and can file claims directly against a company.

  1. i do not feel sorry for anyone who bought fallout 76. you know since oblivion that is something you just don’t do. worse if you still throw down money blindly to these pigs after what they did to human head studios or obsidian then you deserve to get screwed. also if you thought fallout 4 was good and then you bought 76…same crappy game.

    1. Acting as though the developer has consistently put out bad games since Oblivion. You know, like Skyrim, one of the best selling games of all time. And whether or not Fallout 4 was “bad” depends heavily on what you were expecting from the game, a lot of folks enjoyed it.

      It’s entirely possible people were hoping to give Fallout 76 the benefit of the doubt, or were simply curious how it’d feel. A lot of people were probably just expecting a typical Bethesda game, not the cavalcade of issues that plagued Fallout 76.

      Saying they got what they deserve only makes you look like bad.

      1. The writing was on the wall long before the game launched, and everyone should’ve realized this because of Bethesda’s track record, not in spite of it. The only logical conclusion one can reach after looking at this game is that it’s a cheap, cynical cash grab. I’m not going to go as far as to say consumers deserve it because they probably have better things to do than watch a game tank, but anyone that got burned by this should’ve known better than to take a chance with a MP only game made by a studio known for their atrociously buggy, lore driven, single-player experiences.

        1. Would like the permission to go a bit off track here. I’m happy how Rockstar, despite their tremendous success with GTA Online, didn’t ship an MP-only game to generate cash. Unlike Activision and Bethesda, umm… I don’t know what to say.

  2. Bethaholes, first they threatened to sue one of their fans for selling an unneeded and unopened copy of The Evil Within 2 and now they are refusing a promised refund. Bethesda must be desperate for people to not get rid of Bethesda games… Screw ’em, they are as bad (actually, maybe even worse) than EA.

  3. That is some terrible advice since may pre-orders come with incentives that you would have to pay money for later on. Don’t bother with twitch streams, they come out after it’s too late to pre-order, plus that ruins the story of whatever game you plan on buying (that’s like watching 25 minutes of a movie before heading to a movie theater to see the same movie.)

    What you can do is watch pre-release video reviews or promotional videos that show gameplay (or you could read pre-release reviews) and make a decision based off of that. I have been pre-ordering since pre-orders were invented, only been truly disappointed with 5 purchases, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lighting Returns FF13 and Final Fantasy XV. I buy around 30-60 games a year (depending on the games released that year,) pre-ordering every single one that offers incentives.

    Pre-ordering is a great thing as long as you don’t mindlessly buy a game without doing some gameplay research. If you’re some fool that pre-orders a game based on videos with only cutscenes, then you don’t have the intelligence required to make an intelligent purchase, it’s as simple as that.

  4. Why do you buy from Bethesda then ? Just don’t support these guys. Let them get out of business so they can learn. I hate devs like this.

  5. I bought a physical copy from Gamestop. I am actually really enjoying the game, but I wish I could take it back for a refund just so I could buy it at a $25 discount. I didn’t pre-order, I got it a couple days after launch and it feels like a slap in the face to have it discounted so quickly. People are saying it’s discounted because of Black Friday but you don’t see other recent AAA titles discounted (RDR2 came out sooner and has no or little discounts).

  6. HAHA! Bethesda wrote the book “How to Win and Influence People”. These jackazzes have taken top spot over Randy “the douche” Pitchford at Gearbox for skeeziest game dev.

  7. Another turd from Bethesda. They should’ve let Obsidian make Fallout 4 and 76. Obsidian created Fallout New Vegas, arguably the best in the series. Poor Todd Howard, forever disgraced in gaming circles and his credibility as a spokesperson for Bethesda is a sad memory. Perhaps someone at Bethesda should have, I don’t know, spoken to some Fallout fans in even one of the thousands of Fallout communities, or perhaps draw in or employ some of the insanely talented Fallout modders. Bethesdas general lack of connection to their fans is really easy to fix, Fire everyone associated with these disasters and just make Fallout great again by hiring someone with a clue.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *