Today, October 23, is Fallout Day, also known as Bombs Drop Day. For those not hip to the lingo, October 23, 2077, is the day of the world-ending Great War in the Fallout mythos: A full-scale thermonuclear war between the US and China that annihilated nations, killed billions, and threw the global climate into a state of complete catastrophe. Hooray!
To celebrate the big day, digital storefronts including Steam, GOG, Humble, and others have put just about every Fallout game imaginable on sale.
There's not a huge variance in prices across most storefronts. Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, for instance, (which we recently ranked as the best of Bethesda's Fallout games, and science doesn't lie so don't complain to me about it) is $5 /£4 / €5 on Steam, Humble, and GOG, while the original Fallout is $2.50 across the board.
In some cases, you'll find slightly lower prices on less well-known storefronts. The base Fallout 3 is on for $2 on Fanatical and Green Man Gaming, compared to $2.50 on Steam—not enough of a difference to cover your car payment for the month, but they're delivered via Steam key anyway, so hey, why not? The more important point is to be sure to check around before you commit: I didn't notice any real outliers amongst the deals, but it's possible I missed something.
One nice thing about sales like this is that it affords me the opportunity to encourage people to try a game that I might otherwise be reluctant to recommend spending money on. That game is Fallout Tactics, which I have championed previously, and not everyone will agree with me (Weekend Editor Jody Macgregor in particular) but I think it's an unfairly maligned entry in the series that deserves a lot more respect than it gets. It's often overlooked because it's not actually an RPG at all, but a turn-based tactical combat game: A lot of fans think that carving out everything but the shooting strips it of all that makes the Fallout series genuinely great, and it also admittedly suffers from a number of bugs and balance issues. But it's two bucks! And really, what can you get for $2 these days? Two years on Twitter, I suppose—but trust me, Fallout Tactics is a much better way to spend your time.
Anyway, the Fallout Day sales are live now and run until October 31, which is the day the Black Rain starts to fall. Here's where to find them all:
And if you do take this opportunity to leap into one of the pre-Bethesda Fallout classics (which I would encourage), be sure to lay eyes on our guide to getting the most out of them—they're great games but they're also aged, and this will definitely help smooth out the experience.
Sales aren't the only figurative Fallout bomb that dropped today: Amazon celebrated Fallout Day today too, not with a sale but an announcement that the long-awaited Fallout TV series will begin streaming on Prime on April 12, 2024.
