Bethesda certainly dropped the ball on the $200 Power Armor Edition when it came to the bag quality, saying they were too expensive to make. It seems giving away high-quality Fallout 76 bags to influencers wasn't that expensive though.
Players have been complaining about the nylon bags that they got in the $200 Power Armor Edition of Fallout 76 instead of the advertised canvas ones and when they asked Bethesda for help, they were told that the bags were too expensive to make and the company will not do anything about it. They offered $5 worth of microtransactions as a compensation.
Now, the bags that influencers at Greenbrier event got are not the same ones from Bethesda's Power Armor Edition promo material, but they are canvas bags and they are more expensive than the cheap nylon fans spent $200 on. The header image is taken from NukemDukem's unboxing video while he was present at the resort for an early preview of Fallout 76.
Needless to say, he received the goody bag for free and it also included a phone or controller charger that looks like a Vault Boy. Stay at the Greenbrier resort was paid for and the rooms were redecorated to resemble Fallout series' art style. This wasn't simply reserved for NukemDukem, as all the influencers who were present at the event received the same package .
All of this couldn't have been cheap, but Bethesda paid fully for it and gave it all away, presumably in hope that early impressions of Fallout 76 would turn out to be favourable.
Bethesda
In other words, those were marketing expenses and Bethesda didn't spare money in that situation. But when it came to fans who paid $200 upfront, they were turned away and offered what is quite frankly, an insulting compensation.
Sadly, this is what gaming came to in modern age. Marketing is what sells games and is therefore more important to companies than customer satisfaction. It's as if Steve Jobs predicted the future , decades ago.
Bethesda's Fallout 76 releasing on 14 November 2018
- Image: 1 / 25
