Bethesda has delivered on its promise and released a beta version of their first Fallout 4 patch on PC, which focuses on stability issues and bug fixes.

Wasting no time, Bethesda has already delivered on their promise to release a beta Fallout 4 update this week. Beta update 1.2.33 was released through Steam this morning, focusing mainly on general stability issues. There are a handful of more specific crashes and quest errors that should also be resolved, but mainly it seems like Bethesda is using this small update to test out their planned patching process.

A couple of "New Features" were included with the update, though they aren't especially notable. It's more likely that they were simple oversights that Bethesda has now remembered to put in. Here's the full update notes for Fallout 4's beta patch 1.2.33:

New Features

  • Number pad keys can now be used for remapping
  • Remapping Activate now works on Quick Container

Fixes

  • General memory and stability improvements
  • Fixed issue where equipped weapons become locked after completing Reunions
  • Fixed issue with When Freedom Calls where the quest would not complete
  • During Confidence Man, fixed issue where player's health would continuously regenerate
  • Fixed crash related to jumping into water and reloading saved games
  • Fixed issue where Launcher would not save God Rays Quality setting properly

Please note that this is a beta patch, meaning users will have to opt in through Steam to download it. It's recommended that any who do choose to take part in the beta copy their save files in case something has gone awry with the update. Bethesda doesn't want anyone upset that a beta patch ruined their 300+ hour playthrough just because they wanted to see if they could get a few more FPS with God Rays enabled. It's probably best to wait for Bethesda to release the final update to all Fallout 4 players after the beta's run its course.

Last week in a letter to the community, Bethesda announced their plans for this week's beta update as well as plans going forward for testing patches. All updates will see a beta release through Steam initially, before moving to consoles. This will give Bethesda the opportunity to check for any bugs in their fixes, which Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Fallout 3 players may recall being a semi-often occurrence. This also allows players facing issues to perhaps get a fix earlier than it'd normally take, as they'll be able to opt in to the in-testing beta update rather than waiting for a full release.

After going through a beta run on Steam, all patches and updates will be fully released to PC owners of Fallout 4. Considering the infrastructure for PC games, updates are cheap and fast for Bethesda to release. And it's clear that Bethesda is planning to be much more active on this front than they were with past game launches. Console players will unfortunately have to wait a while yet even after updates hit PC. Bethesda will likely want additional testing done for console updates as they can't be put out as often or as speedily. Bethesda might even wait and bundle their updates into larger packages for easier distribution.

Any particularly egregious Fallout 4 bugs that you think Bethesda should have addressed in this first patch? Happy to see them addressing anything this soon after launch?

Fallout 4 is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: Steam