If you've somehow missed the hype over the last seven days—though I'd be shocked considering how much we keep banging on about it—the Fallout TV show is pretty dang good. Its success is rippling out to its source material, with games like New Vegas and Fallout 4 seeing an uptick in player count, and Fallout 76 seeing an all-time high on Steam.
Another game feeling the love right now is Fallout Shelter, the management sim that's been quietly enduring on mobile since 2015, and on PC since 2017. According to GamesIndustry.biz, its revenue has shot up by a tasty 232.4% since the TV show released, leaping from around $20,000 on April 10 to $80,000 just three days later. While it's not exactly big bucks in the mobile gaming world, it's still a decent uptick for a game that's been sort of existing as background radiation for the last few years.
The report also shows that downloads were up by 346.4% in the same timeframe, having already increased by 20% within just the first 24 hours of the show landing on Amazon Prime Video. As of writing, the game is chilling at 9th place on Apple's top free games for iPhone and 45th place on the same charts for iPad. For PC players, SteamDB shows a 217% increase for the game since the show's debut, going from just shy of 2,000 concurrent players to a peak of 5,871.
The numbers are still small, sure, but it's nice to see what an actual good adaptation of a videogame can do for a series. I was one of the folk who fell off Fallout Shelter faster than the time it took me to download it back in 2015, but I have fond memories of being stood outside my classroom in college, surrounded by my pals who were all tapping away at their little vaults for months on end.
Our own Elie Gould reckons that the best way to take on the TV show is to play Fallout Shelter alongside it. "It never ceases to amaze me how fun this small game is," they wrote. "Caring for every single dweller isn't tough work, but you still need to keep on top of things." The game even just had an update on mobile (not PC, sadly) to add the show's main trio… and, uh, Ma June for whatever reason, all of whom have some questionable SPECIAL scores.
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Mollie Taylor
Features Producer
Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she's not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.
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