Fallout Shelter was released alongside the reveal of Fallout 4 because Bethesda didn’t want to upset you.

Fallout 4 was teased, announced and fully revealed at E3 2015, all in the space of a couple of weeks – and within five of its November 10 release date.

That’s the kind of breathtaking pace we like around here, and shows Bethesda is thinking about how to make its fans happy. But it turns out the publisher is also thinking about how not to make them mad.

Speaking to GamesIndustry, Bethesda executive Pete Hines said the announce and release of Fallout Shelter alongside Fallout 4’s E3 2015 reveal discouraged the backlash that might have otherwise accompanied news that Bethesda had made a free-to-play mobile game based on Fallout.

“If we tried to do this last year without announcing [Fallout 4 for consoles and PC] and said, ‘Oh we’re doing a game and it’s on mobile and it’s called Fallout Shelter,’ we’d probably get lynched, right?” he said.

“There would be pitchforks at the gate. ‘That’s not the Fallout we asked for, you bastards!’

“But doing it this way, they’re like, ‘I’m getting what I want and oh, by the way, while I wait here’s this other free thing that’s fun to play.’ So part of it is just how do we not get ourselves killed and make it a success?”

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It’s embarrassing to me that the audience for games is so unpleasantly vocal that publishers have to think about this kind of thing. Then again it’s not especially surprising that our devotion to an entertainment medium all about flattering us and fulfilling our fantasies makes us act a little spoiled, huh.