Fallout 4 Players Are Using Mods, Guides To Remove The Next-Gen Update

An image shows Vault Boy fixing a gun.

A new update for Fallout 4, intended to improve the game, has done quite the opposite for many players. As a result, many PC users are using Steam guides and downloading mods en masse to roll back the annoying “next-gen” update, making these Fallout 4 guides and mods extremely popular.

On April 25, Bethesda updated Fallout 4—nearly a decade after its launch—and added some new content, fixed some bugs, improved performance in troublesome areas, and added a 60fps option to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Sounds great, right? Wrong. While Bethesda might have had nice intentions with this (delayed) “next-gen” update, the actual rollout of this new Fallout 4 patch has been a horrible nightmare. It broke most mods, delayed the massive Fallout London fan expansion, removed the ability to change settings on Steam Deck, and introduced new bugs on consoles. But players on PC are fighting back using—what else?—mods and Steam guides to help players revert or skip this messy update.

As spotted by VG24/7, two of the most popular Fallout 4 mods on Nexus Mods are directly related to reverting the game’s new April 25 update. There’s Bilago’s “STEAM – Skip Next-Gen” mod that lets players who haven’t downloaded the update essentially trick Steam into thinking Fallout 4 has already been updated. This mod has been downloaded over 23,000 times since April 25.

A screenshot of Fallout 4’s nexus mods.

There’s also Zerratar’s “Fallout 4 Downgrader”, which—as you might guess from the name—lets players on Steam “downgrade” Fallout 4 to the previous patch before the controversial “next-gen” update. This lets players use all their beloved Fallout 4 mods again. The downgrader has been downloaded over 35,000 times since April 27.

Meanwhile, I also spotted numerous (and popular) Steam guides in Fallout 4’s community section that focus entirely on how to revert the update and/or block it from happening. Some of these are written clearly and provide plenty of help to revert the Fallout 4 update. Others point to mods to download and ways to stop Steam from updating the game. And at least one is just a joke about how much the person hates Todd Howard and Bethesda.

All and all, it’s clear that Fallout 4’s next-gen patch has been a disastrous rollout, one which fans are actively fighting against. And while most mods and fan-created tools will eventually be updated to work with Bethesda’s big update, I hope the developer has learned a lesson from this whole situation. If you build games that support mods and those end up being a big reason why your games sell well for years, you should probably take a moment to give those modders a chance to update their work before you flip the big update switch and destroy everything.

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