Fallout 76 PS4 PlayStation 4

You may recall the recent discovery that GameStop Germany is giving away copies of botched online shooter Fallout 76 with purchases of second-hand controllers. Well, it seems that's not the only way the country's retailers are ridding themselves of unwanted stock. A new Reddit post shows a copy of Bethesda's game strapped to the back of an external hard drive.

That's right, it seems the game is being attached to purchases of HDDs as well as DualShock 4 controllers and more. Within the comments of the post, an employee of German retailer Saturn confirms the practice, saying that copies are given away when you buy consoles, controllers, or hard drives. "Even if you don't want it," they add.

The same user goes into a little more detail as to why this is happening. Apparently, Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax Media will often "over-sell" to stores, which is why retailers seem to have so much excess stock. The company compensates the shops each time Fallout 76 is handed out: "We get a specific amount of money back from ZeniMax for every sold attached copy. It’s the cheaper way for them [at the moment] instead of another refund or a permanent price cut." In other words, stores are clawing back the funds spent on their stock of the troubled title by giving it away, which works out better for the publisher than simply cutting the price or refunding the retailers.

Hopefully Bethesda can improve Fallout 76 to a point where people will be happy to have it, whether they spent money on it or not.

[source reddit.com]