Well I’ll be. The scheme to get Fallout 4 using only bottlecaps actually worked!
For those of you that haven’t been following this: last week, a Redditor shared pictures of a shipment that was being sent to Bethesda by a friend. It included a letter, and a package containing about 2240 bottlecaps. Real ones. From beers and drinks and such. The intention was, of course, to see if they could pre-order Fallout 4 using Fallout’s trademark currency. The fan said that it took them years to amass that many caps. It was a fun stunt that had no guarantee of working…but it looks like the effort was not in vain.
Today, GatorMacheteJr posted an update on imgur: Bethesda not only received the caps, they are going to honour the deal. Amazing.
“[Bethesda] told me since I was the first person to do this, I would be receiving a copy of the game this November, and that [they] would be running my caps over to deposit them at the People’s Bank of Point Lookout,” GatorMacheteJr wrote.
Global community lead at Bethesda Matt Grandstaff confirmed this on Twitter, and also shared pictures of the bounty:
Yes, my office smells like beer #Fallout4 pic.twitter.com/0VSGMV7NNF
— Matt Grandstaff (@gstaffinfection) June 24, 2015
@gwilburn @Bethblog for being first, he deserves the recognition. 🙂
— Matt Grandstaff (@gstaffinfection) June 25, 2015
Now the question is: will the fan get a regular copy of Fallout 4, or will it be the highly coveted Pip-Boy edition? Also: how many copycats will this inspire? Poor Grandstaff. Hope you’re ready for way more bottlecaps from hopeful fans!
Comments
14 responses to “Bethesda Actually Lets Fan Pay For Fallout 4 With 2,200 Bottlecaps”
Despite clarifying that he only gets it coz he was the first, they are going to get SOOOOOO many bottle caps from now on.
I doubt there are people with more caps than him though. I’m expecting people building power suit with bottlecap and sending it to bethesda.
I could collect more bottlecaps from now to launch… 2200 bottle caps and it took him years he reckons?! Dude doesnt drink enough. I’m forever picking up a hundred on my back table…
Collect them and you might be able to afford Fallout 5.
Nah just stop drinking so much – Ill be able to afford a lot of things 😉
By the time Fallout 5 comes out caps will be actual currency.
Yeah I’d like to see that…as in, I would actually like to see someone build a power suit out of bottlecaps, for real.
BRB going to send them 5,560 bottlecaps in exchange for a laser pistol.
Good PR for Bethesda, they managed this well. Made it clear this was a once off.
So from this we can determine an official exchange rate for bottlecaps
2,200 bottlecaps = AU$89
Therefore 1 bottlecap = AU$0.04
In SA, the bottle is worth 10c at recycling, so you’d only need 890 bottles to make up the cost. Alternatively, assuming each bottle costs $2.00 to buy, you only need to not buy 45 bottles of alcohol/coke to make the money.
Or you could just work for a few hours and earn the money to buy it.
Let me calculate the actual price for 1 bottlecap.
Wikipedia page says 1 bottlecap is about 2.3 grams.
Let’s assume all bottlecaps involved are made of tin.
Infomine.com says tin is 6.89 USD/lb, which is 8.96 according to Google, which is 19.77 AUD/kg after weight conversion.
2.3g = 0.0023kg,
so 1 bottlecap is about 0.045 AUD, which is surprisingly close to doggie’s calculation.
The guy paid 2200 bottlecaps, which means he paid 100 AUD for that game.
If Bethesda does give him the Pipboy edition, I say it’s a fair deal.
Maybe they could sneak in an Easter Egg with a pile of caps somewhere in the game too?
Well this news brightened my day. 🙂
That’s very cool of them. I know I’d have wanted to accept this immediately, without letting it set a precedent, too.
I like how some developers do this sort of stuff for fans. Just shows that it’s not all about $$ to them.
You can buy 1,000 bottle caps from the homebrew store for $25. So that’s like $60 worth of caps and 1 trip to the shop