However popular you think the Fallout games are right now, you’re wrong – the numbers are astonishing

Hello there. You might be aware that, following the arrival of Amazon’s Fallout TV show lots of people have been, well, playing Fallout games. It’s a trend that’s been pushing modding sites into new territory when it comes to serving folks ways to spice up their favorite Fallout, and now Bethesda’s casually revealed some of the actual player numbers involved.

It’s important to note that – while hype for the second season of Amazon’s Fallout is already building – Fallout 4’s next-gen update hasn’t even dropped quite yet. So, there’s probably a chance the numbers I’m about to chuck at your face have a chance to climb at least a little bit further soon.

In a couple of tweets form the offical Fallout account, Bethesda revealed that “almost five million” players were recorded in total across all of the titles in the Fallout series during a single day recently. To put that in context, that’s almost a million more people than the entire estimated population of Croatia as of 2022 – which was just over 3.8 million – playing the likes of Fallout 4, New Vegas, and probably like five people playing Fallout: Tactics.

We did get an idea of exactly how much one game in the series contributed, Bethesda celebrating the fact that Fallout 76 attracted over a million vault dwellers to drop in over the course of that sole day, a very good thing, even if it probably leading to a lot of folks logging in to see that their usual C.A.M.Ping spots were already occupied. It’s certainly a stark contrast – both in terms of popularity and public opinion – from the game’s well-documented rocky launch, though as we recently highlighted, if you dig its premise, 76 has been pretty good for a while now.

Also, because we all care about putting numbers in context here, one million is roughly a hundred times as many people as have downloaded this Fallout New Vegas mod that lets you recruit a Deathclaw in a business suit – called Mr Claw, because of course – as a companion. I’m taking a small liberty there, because I’m using the mod’s total downloads number, which includes people grabbing it more than once, but you get the point.

If you’re currently planning on getting back into Fallout soon, possibly to patrol the Mojave alongside Mr Claw, make sure to check out our very serious ranking of all of the games in the series.