Anyone who is anyone in the Fallout 76 space knows about the game’s glaring lack of crossplay mechanics. It has been one of the biggest sticking points for players over the years, exacerbated by the fact that so many similar games have crossplay features.
Bethesda Game Studios is well aware of the yearning players have to blow open the Fallout 76 ecosystem. Last year, we sat down with the team in Los Angeles and learned how difficult it would be to add crossplay to Fallout 76, and in a new interview, that was reiterated.
But the way it was framed suggests it’s now a plan… Almost.
Will Fallout 76 Ever Get Crossplay?
In June 2025, we sat down with Bethesda’s Jon Rush and Bill LaCoste to talk about Gone Fission, the most recent Fallout 76 update at the time. One of the key questions we asked concerned crossplay and cross-progression mechanics, to which Bill said:
People ask us that all the time. And the thing for us, it has been more of a technical challenge for us to be able to do that. It’s not that we don’t think about it, we think about it often.
But, overall, no real plans right now to introduce crossplay, but certainly, we get asked to consider it very often, so we do.
Maybe in the future.
In October, another interview surfaced between Bethesda Game Studios and the Iron Lords, and again, it was stressed that they’re asked about Fallout 76 crossplay all the time, but there were ‘no real plans’ to introduce the feature, much to the chagrin of players:
It’s never a no, right?
But what I will say, is that those are decisions usually made at the very beginning of development, and right now it’s a huge technical lift for us to have crossplay or cross-progression on it (Fallout 76).
It’s something we get asked about constantly from players. I understand why, I feel the same way. I’d love to go play on Steam and then go play on Xbox or PlayStation and just have my character, but right now, it’s a little bit too difficult for us to pull off.
But then the pair appeared in yet another interview, this time with Polygon, and it seems things have changed. Rush and LaCoste altered their direction on the Fallout 76 crossplay topic, going from ‘too difficult’ and ‘no real plans’ to something much more tangible.
Jon Rush said:
We are looking into it, and we have plans to try to scope out what that work is going to entail for us.
It’s just not in the immediate plans for us. We know players want it.
And he was backed up by LaCoste:
What we can promise players is that we will continue to investigate, we will continue to try to establish plans to make that a thing in the future, just not in the short term.
It’s a little weak, but Jon’s comment about ‘we have plans’ and ‘we are looking into it’ is perhaps the closest we’ve ever gotten to the Fallout 76 crossplay debate being resolved. If they’re sizing up the technical delivery of crossplay mechanics, we’re one step nearer to playing with our friends across those gaming borders.
Do you want to see crossplay mechanics work their way into Fallout 76? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Cold Snap is coming back to ARC Raiders
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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