Bethesda Permanently Bans Fallout 76 Players for Vile Homophobic Attack
Bethesda has taken appropriately harsh measures against several Fallout 76 players recently after footage emerged of them engaging in a disgusting homophobic attack online. The footage first surfaced on Twitter and has since attracted widespread attention, including from Bethesda. Fortunately, the studio reacted swiftly to punish those responsible.
Group of Fallout 76 Players Commit Homophobic Attack
A recording of the homophobic attack was posted on Twitter by one of the victims, AJpls. As the footage shows, they and their group were subject to serious harassment by another group of players, using the game’s proximity voice chat. At present, the in-game chat system in Fallout 76 is on by default unless players actively turn it off. It currently lacks a push-to-talk feature; something which Bethesda has promised to add in a future update. However, that complaint pales in comparison to what these Fallout 76 players had to deal with.
https://twitter.com/twitch_ajpls/status/1063293481106460672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1063293481106460672&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eurogamer.net%2Farticles%2F2018-11-30-bethesda-bans-fallout-76-player-for-life-following-shocking-homophobic-attack
Several high-level Fallout 76 players attacked and harassed the group, using the game’s PvP system. Despite the anti-griefing mechanics which make it difficult for players to engage in PvP with those who don’t wish to fight back, these players were undeterred. The group’s ringleader in particular, whose username is NathanTheHicc, utters numerous homophobic slurs and threats during the footage. The group describes themselves as “the gay eliminators,” and claim to be “cleansing the wasteland of the queers,” among other vile statements.
According to AJpls, the harassment began when their group met NathanTheHicc. After asking them for an item to cure a disease, they spoke casually for a short while. At this stage there was seemingly no indication of the abuse that he would later unleash. However, one of the group made a passing comment that his character or outfit was cute. At that stage, he abruptly said, “I don’t fuck with that homo shit” and left. Shortly after, he returned with a group of other players and began harassing them. When the group eventually killed AJpls’ character after persisting against the anti-griefing mechanics, AJpls and his own group changed servers.
Bethesda’s Response
“The tweet was forwarded to some community managers for the game and they were very kind and helpful,” says AJpls, speaking with Eurogamer; “we were given a link to report the players but had issues with it. The site asked for a video file of the incident but the accepted file types weren’t video files. So we couldn’t send one. For me, the page would not even load. It seems very difficult to report players.”
Unable to report the players directly, AJpls uploaded the footage to YouTube. Bethesda has now taken action, however. At first, the offenders only got a three-day ban. However, that decision has now been revised; “After additional review,” says a studio representative; “we have now permanently banned the players we’ve identified.”
Hopefully, Bethesda will learn from the incident and make the reporting system easier for players to use. As AJpls states, this sort of language has no place in any forum, whether online or offline. Indeed, this sort of disgusting language can have terrible consequences; “These guys were running around targeting people and what if they targeted a kid playing that was struggling with their identity? What if they said all those things to someone that was playing solo and didn’t have anyone to talk to? That can really mess someone up. Playing a game to escape reality and then that happens. That’s why we need to be able to report these people and why companies need to do something about reports.”