Updated: Bethesda: Fallout Games Back on Steam a “Priority”

Bethesda says that it’s focusing efforts on returning the classic Fallout games to Steam.

Fallout fans were hit with some bad news recently when GOG revealed that it would be losing access to the franchise at the end of 2013. Sure enough, we’re now a few days into the new year and the Fallout series is now nowhere to be found on the site (unless you already own it).

GOG wasn’t the only digital retailer to lose access to Interplay’s classic post-apocalyptic franchise, however. The game’s were recently also pulled from Steam, something that apparently doesn’t sit too well with Bethesda Softworks. “We’re working to return Fallout games (1, 2, Tactics) to Steam and will provide an update when they’re ready to go,” said the developer in a recent Tweet. When asked by other Twitter users about whether or not the company was also working to return the game’s to GOG, it replied (several times) that its “priority right now is returning the games to Steam at the earliest date possible.”

This, of course, may be a bit disappointing to Fallout fans hoping to get their hands on DRM-free versions of the franchise’s earlier games, but given the size of Steam’s user base, it’s also not that surprising that Bethesda would focus its efforts there first. The real question, of course, is if the company intends to help restore the games to GOG at all. The fact that GOG made a point of giving all of its Fallout titles away for free prior to their removal could, in some ways, be taken as a bad omen. That being the case, Bethesda hasn’t said that the games won’t ever make their way back to GOG, so we won’t make any assumptions just yet. We have, however, reached out to Bethesda for further comments to help clarify what’s going on.

UPDATE: Bethesda’s Erin Losi has informed us that “Steam is a little easier because we are already a publisher [there].” Conversely, “[Bethesda] are not currently a publisher on GOG so that would require agreements, etc.” Losi was unable to confirm if the company would turn its focus to reinstating the GOG versions of Fallout 1/2/Tactics after the conclusion of its business with Steam.

Source: Twitter