Earlier this month, video game publisher Bethesda suspended the account of a Fallout 76 player after he shared an exploit with the developers so that they could patch it. At the time, the player also described how he’d requested a refund on his Fallout 1st membership because of all the unfixed bugs in the game but Bethesda had denied the refund request.
The player that Bethesda had suspended and denied a refund request was the creator of the popular community tool Map76 – a website that mapped objects, resources, and other items in Fallout 76. After feeling mistreated by Bethesda, this player took Map76 offline and replaced it with updates on the current Bethesda situation.
Now, as it faces mounting backlash from the Fallout 76 community for its treatment of the Map76 creator, Bethesda has backtracked on its initial refund refusal and released an official response to the incident.
The Map76 creator shared the news that Bethesda had decided to give him a refund in an update which contained the following message from Bethesda customer support:
official statement on Reddit which said: the Map76 creator responded by highlighting that before being banned, he was concerned about “a big enormous game destroying exploit” and was using his technical expertise to get more details on and then report this exploit to Bethesda. However, even when he tried to explain this intention and context to Bethesda, he was still banned. To make matters worse, the same exploit that he was trying to report has still not been fixed over a month later.The incident has sparked criticism of Bethesda’s inconsistent stances between its different departments and also in the way it treats people using exploits to cheat compared with those testing exploits so that they can be reported to Bethesda.
When he was banned from Fallout 76, the Map76 creator described how Bethesda’s community managers understand that third-party tools are sometimes used by the community to test exploits before reporting them and often work directly with those in the Fallout 76 community who find such exploits. However, Bethesda support doesn’t take this into account and often bans players for using these tools, regardless of context.
The top responses to Bethesda’s statement on Reddit also highlight the community’s frustration with Bethesda’s inconsistent application of its rules. Many of these responses point out that hackers or cheaters often get warnings or three-day suspensions while players such as the Map76 creator, who are testing exploits, get banned permanently.
