Bethesda visits 12-year-old boy who has cancer so he can play Fallout 76

In Virginia, a 12-year-old boy named Wes has been fighting a rare form of cancer called neuroblastoma. Wes' doctors recently recommended stopping his cancer treatments, feeling they would do more harm then help. According to a Facebook post by Wes' parents, Wes "...realized that he probably would never get to play the Power Armor Edition of the new Fallout 76 game he had preordered as soon as it was announced back in June which isn’t set to be released until this November."

Well, Wes got to play Fallout 76 last week, becoming the first person outside the industry to do so. Matt Grandstaff of Bethesda visited Wes at home with a copy of Fallout 76, along with a prototype of the power armor helmet signed by Todd Howard.

"While he doesn’t get to keep the game because it’s too early," the post continues, "just those hours of playtime made him happier than you know."

Wes has been fighting neuroblastoma since he was five. He has a GoFundMe page if you would like to donate.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

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