A new game-inspired television series has its fans in a vice grip, and this time, it's prompting a resurgence in mods for the original story. Less than two weeks after the release of Fallout on Prime Video, gamers are flooding NexusMods in search of clever alterations to the source content, prompting the distribution platform to issue a heavy traffic warning.
"We are experiencing much more traffic than usual due to the popularity of the Fallout TV series," NexusMods' status page read Friday afternoon. "We have deployed extra resources where possible and we are monitoring the uptime and performance across the network. We have staff on call at all times to deal with any problems. Please do be aware that this extra traffic could cause a degraded experience across the website and our applications."
An update provided Saturday morning said NexusMods staff were investigating impacted performance. On Sunday, staff re-routed some file downloads and provided additional site resources to restore the typical site experience, but the site is continuing to struggle to facilitate downloads efficiently.
Fans' enthusiastic response to the first season of Fallout has buoyed the entire franchise, which has existed since 1997. Released nearly a decade ago, Fallout 4 is now Europe's best-selling game. The same title, along with Fallout 76 and Fallout: New Vegas, currently sits within the top 20 of Steam's sales chart, while Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition is at position 49.
A similar phenomenon happened last year with The Last of Us, a Naughty Dog survival horror game adapted for TV by HBO. After the first season was released in January 2023, interest in the source content pushed The Last of Us: Part I from number 36 on market analysts' best-seller charts to number 11. The Last of Us doesn't have much of a mod scene, though: It took until April 2023 for a significant mod to hit the franchise, and not many customization options have bubbled up since then.
Fallout's mod scene offers a wide range of major and minor tweaks, from the ability to play as characters Lucy or Ghoul and replace billboards with Prime Video series assets to playing music from the TV series. Mod packages are even available for the VR version of Fallout 4, enabling players to see their own in-game bodies and enable modded achievements.
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