Bethesda Coming After Trespassers in the Fallout 76 Developer Room
Earlier this month, Fallout 76 players discovered a secret ‘developer room,’ which contained every item in the game, along with a strange human NPC. Since then, the room has become a haven for exploiters who took the opportunity to pilfer as much as they can from the room, which even contained some unreleased items. Now, the room is apparently inaccessible, and Bethesda is coming after anyone who set foot in it. The reason? The only way to enter the Fallout 76 developer room was by using illicit 3rd-party mods or cheating software.
Bethesda Already Issuing Bans to Those Who Entered the Fallout 76 Developer Room
Fallout 76 exploiters have been Bethesda’s primary target in recent weeks. Their latest patch fixed a major item duplication exploit which had been causing a great many problems. Things were so bad that players had started forming their own anti-exploiter vigilante bands, with all manner of unintended consequences. The Fallout 76 developer room is also now inaccessible, and Bethesda has begun banning accounts which accessed the secret area.
The studio recently issued a statement on Facebook about this issue; “We are looking into accounts where players have obtained items by accessing areas of the game that are not intended for the public. These areas are only accessible to PC players that are using 3rd party applications to get into these areas.”
Until now, Bethesda had been issuing automatic account suspensions to any account which accessed the room. However, they now seem to be going after anybody who has gotten their hands on items taken from inside. This could be in response to exploiters intentionally using dummy accounts to access and steal from the room. Because the automatic bans took several hours to take effect, this gave them ample time to transfer items to a different account before receiving a ban; thereby avoiding punishment. Obviously, Bethesda wants to stop the circulation of unreleased items. However, they clearly also want to go after players using illicit 3rd party applications. Hacking and cheating have long been problems in most online games, but this is Bethesda’s first foray into this particular arena. Hopefully, their anti-exploiter measures prove successful in the long run.