The seemingly never ending rollercoaster ride that is Fallout 76 has once again fallen back on hard times the past few weeks. After delaying the anticipated Wastelanders expansion, Bethesda went on to add a controversial and pricey premium subscription plan, which users later discovered was bugged. Even more controversy has broken out this week after Bethesda decided to take action against one of the most notable Fallout 76 players.
Jaret Burkett, who most Fallout 76 players know as the creator of Map 76, also took it upon himself to test exploits and report them to Bethesda to be fixed. One exploit that many players have discovered allowed them to tweak The Purveyor vendor's currency to use regular bottle caps in order to acquire Legendary items. Burkett picked up on this problem due to lower level players having items they probably should have had at that point.
A day after reporting the problem to Bethesda, Burkett's account along with three others in his group were banned. Unfortunately, his popular and influential website Map 76 was also taken down and remains offline to this day. In it's place is a small FAQ where Burkett attempts to explain things from his perspective. At this point, Bethesda has not given him much in the way of answers or if his account will be reinstated.
Naturally, this hasn't sat well with the community and Bethesda has once again on the defensive. Earlier this week, a Community Representative took to the forums to explain that the company does not ban users for reporting glitches or exploits. The post goes on to condemn those who actively work with third party tools, which is odd considering that testers also use these tools to help the game. The responses to this post have not gone over well with many citing Jaret Burkett's current situation.
This situation isn't likely to get resolved any time soon, though it can be argued that Bethesda is in desperate need of a win. Ealier this month ZeniMax, Bethesda's parent company, added fuel to the fire by admitting to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that it misled customers regarding refunds from the period of November 24, 2018 through June 1, 2019. The company will be reaching out to those that contacted them for a refund within those dates.
Fallout 76 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Bethesda Forums; AltChar