A Fallout 76 gamer who helpfully shared an exploit with game developers Bethesda so they could patch it, promptly had their account suspended.
The user was the creator of Map76, a website dedicated to helping players navigate Fallout 76 and showing the location of every object, resource, vein, and deposit in the game.
However, after feeling mistreated by Bethesda, the site has now closed and has been replaced with a detailed reason why the project has been canceled.
“I have dedicate(d) a lot of time and resources to this game and making tools. This map is just one tool of many. I am in a group of data miners that mine the game and who find and report exploits and bugs. An exploit was leaked about a month ago on an obscure forum. We discovered it, tested to make sure it was real, and reported it directly to the community managers. Our accounts that we used to verify the exploit were promptly banned. We have been contacting support explaining that we are the ones who discovered and reported it, but have not gotten a response. This has been going on for weeks now.”
The creator explained how he then went to request a refund from Bethesda due to all of the bugs that are in the game and how they evidently don’t appear to want help in fixing it. However, they were denied a refund of the $14 the creator had spent.
“Here is the thing. $14 is nothing. It is nothing to me, and more importantly, it is nothing to them. But, there are principals here. They charged money for a broken product that was not as advertised. And they would rather lose a customer who was that die hard fanboy and has spent hundreds of dollars buying atoms, has purchased 6 accounts, has helped find and fix bugs, has created heavily used community tools, and helped build a community around this game, than give me back my $14.”
“You didn’t save $14 you dumb greedy pieces of shit. You lost a steady revenue stream and free community tools.”
Many tech companies and even game developers often welcome feedback from fans and even sometimes offer rewards to those that share exploits with them so that they can make the game safer for all players.
However, instead of recognizing the input from the community, Bethesda obviously didn’t see the benefit and banned the user.
