Fallout 1st



Fallout 1st is a paid subscription service for Fallout 76. It costs $12.99 USD for one month and $99.99 USD for one year. A number of features and items are unlocked upon becoming a Fallout 1st Member. It was first made available with patch 14 on October 23, 2019.

Membership benefits
Players will also receive the Ranger Armor Outfit, Ranger Helmet, Mechanic's Floors, Mechanic's Wallpaper, Ranger Uniform icon, Funky Mothman dance emote, and the Protectron Shuffle dance emote. The player will keep all of these even if their Fallout 1st expires.

Launch controversy
Upon the announcement of Fallout 1st, gaming news sites were quick to point out the point of contention for the user base was that several long-requested features were gated by the subscription, most importantly private worlds. IGN echoed many of these main criticisms. The nature of the subscription service was described by Cass Marshall of Polygon as being in "harsh conflict with the content of Fallout 76, "further contrasting the conflicting anti-capitalistic messages of corporate greed and the pre-War automation riots with a nickel and diming subscription."

Reaction by some users to Fallout 1st was initially negative, concentrating in the period immediately after its announcement and introduction, in May 2020. Gamesradar reported that some players targeted subscribers specifically to grief in game, akin to a class war mimicking the in-universe class struggle. Other complaints referred to several features not working as intended upon launch. Despite being fixed by later patches, some users of Fallout 76 protested the launch by creating in-game protest messages or quitting the game entirely. One example of such is Fallout First, a domain purchased by David Chapman who created a website to mock the announcement post of Fallout 1st. The website has shut down by January 2021 but can still be accessed through an archive.

Filing cabinet controversy
In January 2022, Bethesda revealed that the exclusive Fallout 1st item for the month would be a filing cabinet, which was a reskin of a filing cabinet already in the game. The filing cabinet immediately proved to be controversial; many players were unsatisfied and upset by the choice of item, claiming it was a lazy, low effort and bland uninspired item, and posted to social media to express their disappointment; many players cancelled their 1st membership or sent messages to Bethesda mentioning they were considering cancelling their Fallout 1st, and requested for a better item to be made available for the month. Other players expressed concerns, viewing the filing cabinet as a sign that Bethesda is caring less about the future of Fallout 76 regarding investing in the game's quality.

The notorious filing cabinet quickly became a meme in the Fallout 76 community,  with players making videos,  artwork, posts criticizing Bethesda for feeling the company was shafting the paying playerbase, refusing to use the item because they felt that the item represents Bethesda being anti-consumer, or mocking the item in their C.A.M.P. Some players were indifferent, mentioning they do not care about the monthly exclusive reward and felt that the anti-cabinet people were overreacting. Other players adopted a pro-cabinet stance to counter the anti-cabinet people and supported Bethesda, renewing their 1st and choosing to display the cabinet in prominence. While the previous controversy created a rift between 1st and non-1st players, the filing cabinet created a rift within 1st users, with players humorously calling it the "Fallout 76 filing cabinet civil war of 2022".