Following the success of its Wastelanders Expansion, Bethesda has announced wide-ranging plans for the MMO Fallout 76 through a road map of content coming in the latter half of 2020. However the specific verbiage of Bethesda's announcement led some to believe that the new season pass being implemented would cost players to participate after the first content drop this summer, so the developer went out of its way to correct this notion.
When the 2020 road map was first unveiled on May 14, 2020, the news post accompanying it said that "you will be able to take part in our inaugural Summer Season for free as soon as it begins." They updated the article on May 20 to clarify that all "Fallout Seasons will be free for all of our players" and apologized for the confusion, with a subsequent reminder of this fact in the Fallout 76 news article posted Thursday, May 21.
Bethesda also clarifies that every player will have access to each new Season of content as soon as it becomes available, and that all players will follow the same progress and reward track for new items and such — though there may be bonus rewards for those subscribed to the premium membership Fallout 1st after the summer. While these seasonal updates will include lots for players to take part in, the developers have been dropping smaller updates with mechanics like ally customization in the meantime.
Added content like the Wastelanders Expansion and the promise of seasonal content has done a lot to help revive a game that many felt was dead on arrival due to a bevy of bugs and a lackluster amount of things to do compared to its series' legacy. Bethesda has also been encouraging new players to try the game through means like free trial weekends earlier this month.
In a lot of ways Fallout 76's redemption story is similar to that of Hello Games' No Man's Sky, which launched with a dearth of content and unkept promises that were slowly rectified over a long post-launch development. No Man's Sky has also promised "ambitious" content coming in 2020.
However with no distinct launch dates for Fallout 76's new Seasons of content, players will have to wait if they want to try out these confirmed free updates. Luckily there is plenty to do in the game thanks to Wastelanders while they wait.
Fallout 76 is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Sources: Fallout 76 May 21 News, Fallout 76 Roadmap