Steam’s bestseller list has a credibility problem. The third-highest-selling product on the platform right now has a 40% positive rating. The fifth has just 33%. Neither is a game.

Fallout 1st, Bethesda’s $12.99/month subscription for Fallout 76, sits at #3 on Steam’s Top Sellers chart as of April 7, 2026 — despite 884 negative reviews out of 1,477 total. One slot below, EA Play, Electronic Arts’ $5.99/month catalog pass, holds #5 with only two positive reviews out of six.

These aren’t products people love. They’re bills people pay.

The reviews read like complaints from people trapped in a recurring charge they can’t quite bring themselves to cancel. “I get this off and on when I get into the game,” one Fallout 1st subscriber wrote. “At most usually only getting a month at a time whenever I delve back into 76. Cancelling my sub soon after to avoid recurring billing […] But oh man, this is just a plain scam all of a sudden.”

Another buyer was blunter: “ITS A RIP OFF I PERCHED IT AND DIDNT GET IT.”

On the EA Play side, subscribers are discovering the catalog they paid for has quietly shrunk. “So, I bought the subscription, but to my surprise, I discovered that EA for some reason removed games from it,” one user wrote. “Battlefield Bad Company 2 - I thought I could at least play the campaign that way, but it’s been removed from the subscription too.”

Steam’s Top Sellers chart ranks by revenue, not enthusiasm. A $12.99 recurring charge generating steady income from sunk-cost players outranks a $60 game purchased once. Both Fallout 1st and EA Play show zero concurrent players — they aren’t even software you launch. They’re line items.

AltChar reported in 2019, citing the leak blog MMOG Fails, that Fallout 1st one-month subscription sales were “much larger than expected” according to alleged Bethesda internal metrics. The money, as always, speaks louder than the reviews.

Sources