There's a perspective from fans that active work on a live-service title impedes the progress of future games, and there may be some truth to that. Naughty Dog cancelled The Last of Us Online amid fears that the studio would be sucked into actively developing it for a decade.
There are some concerns that Bethesda's resurgent live-service title Fallout 76 could be hampering the development of Fallout 5, but according to an interview TheGamer had with 76's creative director Jon Rush, this is definitively not the case.
"Absolutely not," Rush told us. "I can understand that perspective, watching from the outside in, but no, absolutely not. If anything, when Fallout 5 does come out, it'll make it even more impactful. But [Fallout 76] isn't holding anything back."
Fallout 76 has certainly had an interesting life cycle. The game was critically panned on release, with critics pointing to the lifeless nature of a world without non-player characters and numerous technical issues. However, Fallout 76 has always had a consistent player base and Bethesda has continued to support and update the game, culminating in a massive spike in players after the release of Amazon's Fallout television series. All in...
