And using the Fun analogy, if its technically a mess for a gamer that removes any fun it might have...or at least reduces it.

I do wonder if this had been an EA or Activision game if some reviewers would have been so harsh. Personally the game looks like a 5 (lack of content) then take into account technical mess that makes me feel that 4 is a reasonable review score.

Saw this on ResetEra about UK and would explain why the big discounts:

Allegedly, Fallout 76 sell-through in the UK was 25%

Maybe when it’s 5. My backlog is way too big to play mediocre games.

Game needs to be added to a ''Top 10 mistakes in gaming history'' list at this point. I feel bad for the super fans of the franchise that got treated this way and that paid full price.

You mean that they only sold around 1/4th of the stock, the stores ordered?
So stores are willing to sell it at half price, because half of something is more than risking not getting anything at all?

That sounds like a believable rumor which would explain the sudden price cut. Let's have a small bit of hope Bethesda will learn from this. I doubt it tough.

Yes they only sold 25% of stock which is pretty bad. The stores have probably been given a discount by the publisher to help get rid of stock otherwise they might just do returns which is even worse for Bethesda.

It has done say 80k in UK rather than 360k, that's a lot of stock with retailers, you can see why they'd be discounting it right now.

A lot of "good" games release and are 40% off a month or 2 later.  

They should just have done a Fallout 3 port or something.

My golden rule for AAA games is BBB: Buy late, Buy cheap, Buy debugged. Problem solved.