Since the debut of Fallout‘s second season on Amazon Prime, the massively popular franchise’s video games have seen a major uptick in players. Season 2 of Fallout continues the stories of Lucy (played by Ella Purnell), The Ghoul (played by Walton Goggins), and Maximus (played by Aaron Moten). This time around, the story takes these characters to New Vegas, a fan-favorite location from the video games.
While many adaptations, like HBO’s popular series The Last of Us, seek to bring the story of a specific game to life, Fallout isn’t copying the major story beats of any one game in particular. Instead, the show takes place within the same world as the games, making it accessible to franchise veterans and newcomers alike. The first season of the show featured a whole new cast of interesting characters who have since made a significant impact on the franchise. Season 2 of Fallout made its debut on December 16, though Amazon chose not to release every episode at the same time. Instead, a new episode airs every week, giving fans plenty of time to savor the experience. As of writing, four episodes have already been released, which means there are only four more on the way.
How The Franchise Has Grown Since Fallout: New Vegas Released
Fallout: New Vegas hit the scene 15 years ago, and since then, the entire Fallout franchise has gone through big transformations.
Fallout Games Are Taking off on Steam
As reported by PC Gamer, just about every title in the Fallout franchise has seen a substantial increase in players since the debut of the television show’s second season. According to SteamDB, Fallout 4 was pulling in about 20,000 concurrent players in the weeks leading up to the show’s second season. Since the premiere, the number of concurrent players has doubled, reaching about 40,000. Similarly, Fallout: New Vegas went from pulling in about 8,000 concurrent users a day to upwards of 20,000. Fallout 76 has also seen an increase in activity, bumping its typical player count of 10-20k up to around 30k. Fallout 3 also managed to double its player count, though only around 100 players were interacting with the title on a daily basis to begin with. Even the original Fallout has seen a big increase in players, bringing gamers back to the 1997 title that started it all. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know if a similar thing is happening on consoles, as there’s no way to access those numbers.
While the Fallout show likely deserves most of the credit for the sudden uptick in gamers actively playing titles from the post-apocalyptic franchise, it’s likely that Steam’s Winter Sale has also contributed to the rising number of players. Games like Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 were given steep discounts during the sale, making them even more accessible to players who may have taken a liking to the show. It’s also possible that the renewed interest in Fallout 76 is a result of The Ghoul actually being added to the title, giving players access to one of the show’s most popular characters. Lucy was also recently added to Fallout Shelter, which is a free-to-play title that gamers can boot up at any time.
While many gamers are happy to pick up older titles, some fans are hoping to see Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas get remastered in the future. Neither of these projects have been officially announced, but Todd Howard has assured fans that Bethesda has a bunch of projects in the works. In 2025, Bethesda shadow-dropped a remaster of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, which became an instant hit with players around the globe. There’s no way of knowing what Bethesda will do next, but some members of the company have suggested that they would like to replicate the success of Oblivion Remastered by shadow-dropping more titles in the future.
