Todd Howard says his main regret about Fallout 76 is not having a free beta

Speaking to GameSpot at E3, Bethesda's Todd Howard was asked if he had any regrets about how Bethesda communicated the idea of Fallout 76 to players before the game's launch back in November of 2018.

"My main regret is not doing a beta that a lot of people could play," Howard said. "Like if we had made it free for every Fallout 4 player and run a 24/7 beta, for a longer period of time, that would have let us see, OK, what are we really dealing with here?"

The Fallout 76 beta, if you recall, was only available to those who preordered Fallout 76—though Bethesda did pass out additional keys that players could share with their friends near the end of the beta period. The beta didn't run full-time, but only a few days a week and often for just a few hours a day.

"The betas we did were concentrated because we were worried about peak concurrencies," Howard said. "So we got those issues solved, but didn't get a good look at, how does the game really behave at scale 24/7. So that, you know... learned that lesson the hard way, but wish we had done that."

You can see the clip of Todd Howard speaking to GameSpot embedded below.