Fallout 76 is free to play this week to celebrate Fallout’s 25th anniversary

Believe it or not, this month marks 25 years since Fallout brought its take on post-apocalyptic survival role-playing to PC. Bethesda are making Fallout 76 free to play for a week, starting today, to mark the occasion. There’s a bunch of other things happening during the rest of October to celebrate the Wasteland too, ranging from events in Fallout 76 to long overdue updates to Fallout Shelter.

Fallout 76’s free to play week includes the recent Expeditions update heading back to Fallout 3’s The Pitt. If you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber then you can pick up Fallout 76 for free all this month by claiming a code here. There’s also a return for the seasonal Invaders From Beyond alien invasion event, which runs from today until October 18th. Later in the month, you can dress up as a pumpkin or some kind of skeletal person for the Spooky Scorched in-game event, running from October 25th to November 8th.

Along with the free to play week, anyone subscribing to Game Pass can claim a free month of Fallout 1st membership. That’s Bethesda’s controversial subscription service for Fallout 76, which gives access to private servers, unlimited in-game storage, and an allowance of the game’s Atoms currency. If you play Fallout 76 then at least you’re getting a few Atoms for nowt out of that.

It wouldn’t be Fallout without having to take some kind of weird personality test, so Bethesda have come up with a new one. The Post-Apocalyptic Loyalty Simulator, or PALS for short, is pretty much the Atom Punk equivalent of Hogwarts’ sorting hat, sifting you into whichever one of Fallout’s many facts your responses seem to indicate you belong to. You can have a go here. I ended up with the Enlightened, Fallout 76’s worshipers of the Wise Mothman.

It’s been more than four years since Bethesda updated free to play Vault simulator Fallout Shelter, launched back in 2015. All the 25th anniversary talk must’ve spurred them into action though, because Shelter’s finally getting a new update. There’ll be new Vault dwellers to recruit, more weapons, a celebration room theme, and a questline revolving around aliens. The update isn’t ready just yet, but should be soon.

Fallout 76’s free to play week runs from today through to October 11th. Bethesda have set up an anniversary site for Fallout’s 25th, which you can check out here.