Random Fallout 4 update references "New Vegas 2" and nobody knows why

Fallout New Vegas — (Image credit: Bethesda)

A recent Steam backend update for Fallout 4 contains a reference to "New Vegas 2," and while that fact almost certainly has nothing to do with the sequel fans have spent years begging for, everyone's still desperate to know why.

Updates to Steam apps are typically publicly visible thanks to third-party tools like SteamDB. Among other things, you can see beta and other alternative versions of a game, such as those made available to testers or press ahead of that game's launch, even when those branches are not intended to be available to the public.

This does not mean New Vegas 2 is in development. These branches can be titled anything, because those names are only intended to be seen by the people invited to them. We know Fallout 4 is getting a new-gen update sometime in 2023, and there's a decent chance this is just an internal test build of that update with a cheeky name.

We've reached out to Bethesda for comment and will update if we learn more. (Don't worry, if we somehow get the scoop announcement of New Vegas 2 out of all this, we will certainly publish something about it.)

Sorry folks, Starfield is likely the closest you're getting to a new Fallout for the foreseeable future.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.