The great Bethesda Migration of ’22 has begun, as the studio officially gives up on its own homebrew launcher in favor for Steam’s much more stable platform. Players have a few weeks — until May 11th, specifically — to migrate their credentials over to Steam before losing access to the old launcher. You can still migrate after the 11th, but you won’t have access to your games until you do.
Bethesda previously posted instructions to guild players through the (hopefully) painless process. “The migration to Steam will include your game library and wallet – meaning you will not lose anything from your Bethesda.net account. Many games will also have their saves migrated, with a few requiring some manual transfers,” the studio said.
This move includes Fallout 76, which used Bethesda’s wonky launcher for years now. However, the big exception to this migration is Elder Scrolls Online, as ZeniMax uses a different launcher entirely for the MMORPG.
The migration hasn’t been entirely smooth so far, as some players have reported issues linking accounts and getting stuck during the process. If this is you, there may be a workaround to help get you back on track.
To take a little of the sting out of this annoyance, Bethesda’s made a couple of its older games free on Steam. You can snag Elder Scrolls Arena and Elder Scrolls Daggerfall for your library right now.
