Fallout Shelter

Fallout Shelter combines underground Vault building with Dweller management and exploration. At $0.00 from Steam, it suits players who want to handle those routines at their own pace.

The Steam PC version is single-player: send Dwellers out for supplies while you manage daily life and threats inside the Vault. With Steam at $0.00 and Dec 17, 2026 – Jan 4, 2027 as the next announced Steam sale window, you can weigh the timing against your budget.

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87%Steam Reviews83.1K reviews63Metacritic/10072OpenCritic/100

Released: Mar 29, 2017

Free to Play · Base Building · Survival · Post-apocalyptic · Singleplayer

Steam·Platform:·United States Steam official priceFreeBuy now

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Price History

Past 36 months · Updated daily

Historical Low~ $0.002023-08Current Low Across Stores~ $0.00SteamAt its historical low now

Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.

01About Fallout Shelter

In Fallout Shelter, manage an underground Vault by building rooms, keeping Dwellers happy, and preparing for danger. Assign jobs, develop their abilities, and send them out to explore the Wasteland. Players rate the game 87%% positive across 83,073 reviews. The Steam PC version supports single-player and full controller support. The interface is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Russian.

Credits

WRITER

Emil Pagliarulo

video game designer

NotableFallout 3 · Fallout 4 · Fallout Shelter

Developer

Bethesda Game Studios

Publisher

Bethesda Softworks

Steam player reviews

87%positiveVery Positive83,073 Steam reviews

Lowest recorded in 36 months

$0.002023-08-12 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.

Language support

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
English	Yes	Yes	—
French	Yes	Yes	—
Italian	Yes	Yes	—

Show 3 more languages

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
German	Yes	Yes	—
Spanish	Yes	Yes	—
Russian	Yes	Yes	—

Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19

02Before you buy

Vault management

Build rooms, assign Dwellers to suitable jobs, and provide outfits, weapons, and training to improve their abilities.

Exploration and controls

Dwellers can explore the Wasteland for loot, equipment, experience, and Caps. The Steam PC version lists full controller support.

Language

Steam PC interface and subtitles are supported in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.

03Frequently asked questions

Can I play solo?

Yes. The Steam PC categories list single-player.

What happens when Dwellers leave the Vault?

Dwellers can explore the surface for equipment, experience, Caps, and adventure, though the wasteland is dangerous.

Can I craft items and customize Dwellers?

Yes. Crafting turns junk into useful items, and the Barbershop lets you customize a Dweller’s appearance.

Popular Steam reviews

Native-language selection · 10 reviews

Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.

RecommendedSteam player

06/10/2018

If this gets 1000 upvotes I'll livestream opening 1000 lootboxes. Please don't I don't want carpal tunnel Final edit, going to leave the other ones below, scroll down if you wanna see the suffering I had during the stream. Alright, after 1000 lootboxes, I can say that I love this game. 10/10 bethesda, I'll do the same in TES Blades if you give me beta access HINT HINT Shoutout to Commanderroot for staying there the entire stream. Slocool and Electricallongboard for being there for the better part of it. The three above sat and didn't say anything during the stream and made me feel lonely. It sums up to: Storage and stats: https://imgur.com/a/Wv9yS8g 238 dwellers https://imgur.com/a/q6DlFnH 2699/7360 storage 203 stimpacks, 179 radaways 314800 caps 429 nuka bottles 8150 food 9200 water 8294 energy 3 fires 0 raids 0% happinness a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of rats 4 hours 40 minutes -------------------------- Edit: 9th of July 2018 the community has spoken, will update shortly, probably going to do the livestream later on tonight. Thanks for people that got my attention that the goal has been reached. Edit2: Playing a different game, will stream at https://twitch.tv/riael tomorrow, 10th of July 2018, around 3PM GMT+3 if I wake up at that time. Going to write down everything that drops, edit the list in here after the deed is done. Edit3: Not even sure if I should be editing these in or writing comments! I've already done the editing so I might as well just keep doing it. One hour left! I hope my fingers will be able to heal. Edit 4: 5 minutes to go, livestream on, boxes ready, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of storage roomssssss Edit yes: It's been an hour and 24 minutes, I tried editing before and it did not work, there's 4 peopl watching, they don't wanna talk to me, send help please, 201 boxes in. Edit 575: If this gets 10k upvotes and someone pays me 1000$ I'll do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 10000 lootboxes. THIS IS AWFUL. At least I get to listen to a podcast. Shoutout to Commanderroot and his wife Helen, as well as Electricallongboard for spending two hours and 12 minutes with me. (only commander did 2 hours, but electrical has been here as well) They don't want to talk, but that's alright, I still love them. 575 boxes to go! Update 500: Ohmygodthishurts... my head hurts... at least I have the podcast. Gonna try edit this onto steam... I'm still live and going to be for like 2 more hours. Feel free to join me and talk to make the pain go away! Edit: 128 to go, currently waiting for a fire to burn out to be able to continue. ETA to completion... like... 30 minutes.Show moreShow less

26.6 hours at review1,086 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

03/30/2017

DON"T EVER SPEND MONEY ON THIS GAME! heres why, all microtransactions are PER save file. what does that mean? if you lose your save file, delete it, it gets corrupted, OR you get game over from the games mechanics, you LOSE ALL purchases forever. with that said the game itself is a heavily downgraded version of Sim-tower, with the same exact graphic setup. which btw Sim-tower came out in 1994... just sayingShow moreShow less

13.5 hours at review1,517 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

06/01/2018

another review that will go down in history without anyone 'finding it helpful' nice game tho EDIT: Guess I was wrong.Show moreShow less

1.1 hours at review913 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

04/01/2017

I'm actually really enjoying this and it's why I'm kinda torn with this review. I'm a huge Fallout fan, coming up to 30 and followed the games all the way from the first. I'll likely continue to play only for a short while though - Fallout Shelter could have been so much more. I'm not sure what went wrong at Bethesda, because there's a real gem game hiding underneath the monetisation. It's such a lovely, charming game. The artwork is brilliant, the audio is fantastic, and I like how much you can customise different aspects of your vault. I like that you send your dwellers out into the wastelands, and the logs they record while they're doing it. I played on release on ios as well, but in all honesty it didn't last very long. The game is weighed down by microtransactions. I wholeheartedly believe that if this was treated like the single player game it is instead of parroting that crappy model that countless games on the mobile stores follow, if the wait timers were divided by 10 and all of this stupid quantum cola stuff was removed altogether, if questing was fleshed out somewhat and timers were reworked to timers in the range of 1-3 hours, long enough to put down but quick enough to ride through if you kept yourself distracted, if you had slapped a £17.99 price tag on the front of it, I'd imagine it'd have sold like hot cakes and the reviews would be immeasurably in your favour. You could have added card expansions in the form of paid DLC if you really were looking to squeeze a bit extra and it would have raised a lot less eyebrows. If you had slapped it on the ios store like that at £9.99, it would have sat at the top of different mobile site's top charts for years to come. There's very little in the way of deep strategy games on mobile without in app purchases, this probably would have made a mint done the right way with integrity, instead of taking this trashy route that only serves to annoy people into paying money. A Fallout themed strategy game with no iap that cross synced between my PC and my iPhone? It'd feel like Christmas. I'd like to imagine that many of the designers were not on board with any of the monetisation stuff and I'd like to believe there's probably a few guys out there that wanted to do something entirely different but had to keep the bosses happy. I feel like this is a good example of what happens when the quest for money interferes too much with a player's experience. You pick these designers up because they are talented people who are passionate about their work and art, let them do their jobs properly! Bethesda in my eyes is respectable when I compare them to other companys in the industry. Get off this road, it leads to ruin. And from a fan's perspective, Fallout deserves better than a honey trap. Shame on you, Bethesda. >:( The jist of my review is that the content is fantastic, I can't fault it. The problem is the way it's served is questionable and why I have not recommended it. Fallout is a flagship title and holds weight in regards to normalising IAPs in the PC gaming marketplace, and said games are more often than not shady, anyone who is familiar with mobile gaming will understand what I mean. Their design makes it easy to irresponsibly mine money from people in an irresponsible way, and I fear that this title will help make it easier for this price model to become commonplace. Cont- So why would you use the microtransaction model? As others have touched on in the comments, part of the reason is that it makes more money, particularly by badgering players into spending small amounts a lot of times to make it harder to recognise the value of things. It's a deceptive price model and the majority of the reason I didn't recommend the game is because I see a brilliant game underneath a model that is unhealthy for the industry. There's a perfectly reasonable arguement that places the responsibility entirely in the hands of the person spending, and I believe the majority of people who thumbs up or downed me are probably divided specifically on how they view that. Is it the responsibility of the designer or the player? I'd argue it was both and I'm not one to complain incessently about games, but this kind of price model is notorious for going after what you call "whales", and I just think it's in bad taste. It's not where I want to see PC gaming go, and in my opinion it's dishonest game design and irresponsible because the majority of income from this game will come from players on both extremes, the ones with oil baron parents and addictive personalities or "low hanging fruit". I work in mental health and these kinds of games can end up pretty much robbing vulnerable people, where the model is most effective. You could quite literally lop the microtransactions off this beautiful game, readjust the timers to compensate, and have an honest title at a set price.Show moreShow less

46.7 hours at review815 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

03/29/2017

I've "played" some of this game on mobile, then on the bethesda pc platform a lot, then on the windows store version which was a terrible thing to do for the immense pain that it is to even create an account on that freaking service. Frankly if Steam had a "mixed" option to rate games, I would probably be rating it that, since it doesn't, I tend to lean a bit more in the whole "negative" rating area. For a simple reason really. Fallout Shelter is a mobile game that has been ported to pc, problem being that when detracting this game from the mobile "ecosystem" you essentially missed out on any incentive to keep playing it, just try it for a while and you'll see it's true, and it's for a basic reason, it's simply easier to give a follow up and a check up in the phone that you don't use always for games or work, than it is to give that kind of attention and consistency on the pc. Pair that up with the fact that since it is a "free to play" title, the game obviously has in-game transactions, something that's no bother, makes sense really, but again, the incentive for even paying for this transactions goes out the window when you take into consideration the simple amass of trainers, as well as memory editing tools that are out there. Some people might start comparing those tools to piracy when being used in "games" such as this one... The pc version of this game is no more appealing to anyone that hasn't played the mobile version than any other flash incremental game, which in a way, if that's what you're looking for, then this game it's fine, just know that is one of those "keep opening every day to do stuff that you'll continue the next day" in order to actually end up simply getting flustered and annoyed once you get most of the stuff there is to get in the game and whatever motivation, or satisfaction you had to keep opening lunch boxes in order to get yet another replicated outfit or weapon, its gone. Just like any other mobile "free to play" game this is nothing more than a successful attempt from Bethesda to create a game that essentially uses the already amazing Fallout popularity as a pedestal in which to have a name, but besides the superficial similarities don't think you'll get more from this than you will get from any other "free to play" game, you'll enjoy it at first, then you'll stop playing it after spending some cash on it, or cheating to give yourself everything, making the game in whichever way you choose, redundant, and a dull experience in anyway you see fit. Some might say i'm being "ungrateful" or "entitled" because i'm posting this in a "free" game, but let me just remind you that right past the "play now" button on Steam, there's a series of items that charge money for you to get them. Others might add that any game becomes a chore once everythings unlocked, but I differ, Dishonored, Styx, Deus Ex, even freaking Fallout, become if anything a lot more interesting once you get a lot of your locked abilities available to you, they expand and they open areas in the game in every sense of the word, for you to keep exploring, for you to keep experiencing, and enjoying. This game doesn't expand on anything, because it's a simple formula, a cycle if nothing else. This is fine for fans that want to throw more cash at Betheda's feet, not for fans that want to get unique or interesting experiences like the ones they got from playing the actual Fallout games. If there's anything positive to say about this, it's that at the very least it succeeds in what it sets out to do. I'm not saying it shouldn't be on pc, The more games the better right? I'm just simply stating that when removing this game from it's mobile "enviroment" there's little to no incentive to actually play it the "proper" way, mostly when you take into consideration the proper way of playing it, signifies nothing more than: Wait till you get tired, and want to spend on some random item to follow the absurd and ridiculous skinner's box scheme set by this game to succeed. You might as well be "playing" a Fallout themed slot machine.Show moreShow less

0.2 hours at review546 people found this helpful

Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/14/2026.