Fallout 76 Steel Dawn update gets a release surprise

By Eric Abent/Nov. 25, 2020 9:18 am EST

Fallout 76 players are getting a nice surprise for the long Thanksgiving weekend, as Bethesda has pushed the game's Steel Dawn update out the door early. Originally scheduled to launch on December 1st, the update is actually available now, but this wasn't some kind of planned surprise on the part of Bethesda. In fact, this was all just mistake that Bethesda decided roll with instead of fixing.

As Bethesda explains on the Fallout website, there was an error that pushed the Steel Dawn update to Xbox players ahead of schedule. Since Steel Dawn wasn't slated to be available until next week, Xbox players were locked out of playing Fallout 76 after downloading the update.

As the company attempted to come up with a solution that would let Xbox players get back to playing, it came to the conclusion that Steel Dawn was ready to go and didn't need to be held back for another week. So, now Steel Dawn is live for all Fallout 76 players across all platforms. It isn't often we see something like this happen, so Fallout 76 players should savor the feeling the an early surprise update while they can.

Steel Dawn introduces a major new quest line that involves the Brotherhood of Steel's arrival in Appalachia. They've come to the wasteland to secure tech from before the bombs dropped, and players will be able to help them in that endeavor. Bethesda has indicated that players may be able to break with the Brotherhood of Steel's overarching goal in previous blog posts about the update, saying that players will get to decide how that reclaimed tech is ultimately used.

Steel Dawn is going to be the last major update that Fallout 76 receives this year, but there are still some things to look forward to as we move through December. According to a roadmap published last month, players will still have a double XP and double SCORE weekends to this month, along with the kick off of Season 3 on December 15th. We'll let you know when Bethesda shares more, but for now, get ready to dive into the Steel Dawn update.