If you've played any of the Fallout video games, you probably know a thing or two about bottle caps, one of the primary forms of digital currency used in the game's post-apocalyptic United States.

One Fallout fan named Seth loves the series so much that he started collecting bottle caps -- the tangible kind you hold in your hand -- in real life. Seth amassed quite a collection during 7.5 years of college and grad school, and estimates that he has around 2,240 caps in his possession.

After seeing Bethesda's announcement for the hotly anticipated Fallout 4, Seth came up with a brilliant idea to see if he could use his bottle cap collection to buy the game when it's released in November for Microsoft's Xbox One , Sony's PlayStation 4 and PCs. The first game in the open-world role-playing series came out in 1997 on PCs and Macs.

Seth posted pictures of the caps, as well as the accompanying letter he sent to Bethesda, to an Imgur gallery, hoping his story would become so popular that Bethesda's PR department wouldn't dare turn him down. Seth got his wish answered Wednesday when he received an email from Bethesda's Global Community Lead Matt Grandstaff, who ended up on the receiving end of the 11.2-pound (about 5-kilogram) box of bottle caps Seth sent to Bethesda.

In the email, which was confirmed Thursday by CNET, Grandstaff told Seth he would receive a copy of the game when it's released, and that Grandstaff plans to take the bottle caps to the People's Bank of Point Lookout post-haste. That's a nerdy Fallout joke, of course. For the uninitiated, the People's Bank of Point Lookout is a fictional pre-apocalyptic bank in the Fallout 3 expansion Point Lookout.

While Seth was successful in getting Bethesda to promise him the game in exchange for bottle caps, Grandstaff was clear that this is only because he was the first to attempt the stunt. Anyone else who wants to play Fallout 4 in November will have to preorder the game with good old-fashioned pre-war money.

(Via GameZone)