Amid turmoil and disillusionment over recent studio closures, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has continued grinding through Fallout 76 and has just finished the “Officer on Deck” questline, granting him the ability to launch the survival MMO’s infamous nukes. The new capability was unlocked just days after a fan bombed the executive’s campsite.
The doomsday clocked ticked closer to midnight over the weekend when Xbox content creator Rebs Gaming noticed a new achievement had popped up on Spencer’s profile. “Phil Spencer just completed the Fallout 76 quest Officer on Deck,” he tweeted. “This quest must be completed to launch nukes. It looks like Phil is preparing to launch a retaliatory nuke against players for nuking his camp.”
That’s because just days prior, a player by the name of real1090jake nuked the CEO during a casual gaming session after weeks of searching for the Xbox head as part of an elaborate role-play fantasy. Players at the time joked that it was retaliation for Microsoft’s decision to close Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and other teams at Bethesda, though real1090jake confirmed to Kotaku that it was just for fun. “This was a calculated attack lol I have no beef with Phil,” he tweeted at the time.
Firing nukes is the final part of Fallout 76's main storyline and requires obtaining launch codes, infiltrating a silo, and killing a bunch of stuff. It used to be a much more tedious ordeal back when the game first released, but launch codes are now shared on a regular basis on fan sites, and over-leveled players will have little trouble fighting their way through the launch sequence. The nukes don’t actually kill players, but they do create intense radioactive blast zones that are great if you want to farm high-level enemies, but a pain if you’re just sitting at your camp trying to repair some armor.
Spencer still hasn’t unlocked the “I Am Become Death” achievement, which triggers once you or a party member actually launch a nuke. He also hasn’t publicly weighed in on the latest Xbox layoffs or the reason behind them. We’ll see which one happens first.