Fallout co-creator says fan theories are too often decided by "the most entitled people on the internet" – only IP owners determine what's canon: "They say something, that's canon"

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Tim Cain thinks you might be confused

Fallout 1 power armor helmet
(Image credit: Interplay)

Miserable news for my Fallout ghoul fanfiction: franchise co-creator Tim Cain says only IP owners determine what counts as video game "canon." Developers don't have much input into the matter, and fan opinions are roughly treated the same way.

You just "can't say game players define canon," Cain says in a new video on his YouTube channel, "because you have no consensus. [...] So that means for any particular game, you're going to have hundreds, thousands, millions of canons. And while you may think that's great and wonderful and that's your truth, I don't see how that helps us."

Let's Talk About Canon - YouTube Let's Talk About Canon - YouTube
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"Let's assume that you're going to say, 'OK, when the majority of players think something is canon, it's canon,'" Cain continues. Then he asks, "are you sure it's the majority of players feel that way? Because what it probably is is the loudest people on the internet, the most frequent posters on the internet, and also some of the most entitled people on the internet." You can keep debating your interpretations of Dogmeat as religious metaphor on r/Fallout, Cain suggests, but saying it doesn't make it true.

That said, a developer like Cain has limited input on what ends up being franchise "canon," too. While Cain acknowledges that dev intent often "aligns with canon and many times also with player interpretation. But it doesn't have to."

Meanwhile, Cain explains, if the Fallout IP owner "says that Harold is a ghoul, he's a ghoul. If they say he's a mutant, he's a mutant," Cain says. "I'm not canon. and the team wasn't canon because even though there's a lot of correlation between what we thought was true when we made it and what is canon, that correlation is not 100%." Any problems, take it up with IP guardian Bethesda.

Or relax with our list of the best Fallout games, ranked.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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