Six years after its release, the online role-playing game is still being played avidly. One player was very enthusiastic, but now his monitor is suffering the consequences.
Many of you have a favorite game. A game you put hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into. Be it an extensive role-playing game that you start over and over again or an online multiplayer title that you sink into with friends.
For one particular player, that game is likely Fallout 76.
Reddit user overcompensk8 claims to have already spent 7,000 hours playing the post-apocalyptic spectacle. However, the OLED monitor on which the game was running didn’t find it funny at all.
“I should have thought about that before I bought it.”
The user posted a photo in the Fallout subreddit that causes us almost physical pain:
7,000 hours of Fallout 76 on an OLED
by
u/overcompensk8 in
Fallout
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“7,000 hours of Fallout on an OLED. I can almost make out my name. I guess that’s the danger of screens that can burn in. I should have thought about that before I bought it.”
But how is that even possible? OLED screens have a major disadvantage compared to other lighting technologies. The individual pixels “age” at different rates because they are self-illuminating. If the same image elements are displayed in exactly the same place with similar brightness for many hours, these pixels wear out more than the rest. The result is a kind of burn-in because the affected pixels lose some of their luminosity. Other types of monitors, such as LCD displays, work with general backlighting. The pixels do not glow themselves, but rather “cover” light to display images, which is why they do not age at different rates. The advantage of OLEDs is that they can display black much more intensely than other monitors because the individual pixels can simply “switch off.” However, this comes with the risk of age-related weaknesses.
If you’re wondering what overcomenpsk8 has been doing in Fallout 76 for so long, he or she has an answer for you. Most of the time is spent messing around with friends, but there is another motivation.
The online role-playing game has a special challenge for Vault dwellers: “Explore Appalachia for 7,600 hours.” You can find this task in the game under the character challenges. The reward is 760 Atoms, the in-game currency of Fallout 76, which is equivalent to about $7.60. If you have a good time with friends in the process, it’s definitely worth it. However, it can’t pay for a broken OLED.
