A group of Fallout 76 players have been banned for life following a homophobic attack that happened in the game. The incident started when a user by the name of NathanTheHicc approached a group asking for a Disease Cure item.
Talking to Eurogamer, a player by the name of AJ said the initial conversation his group had with him was fine, but soured after a member his group complimented NathanTheHicc on his character’s outfit being cute.
A short time later, NathanTheHicc returned with his group and the harassment began. After hurling insults, homophobic slurs, and graphic language, NathanTheHicc’s group launched an attack. AJ posted footage of what happened, which you can see below (warning: graphic language):
So @bethesda, how do we report people in @Fallout? @ChipWhitehouse @Handsandhead and I literally had our characters hunted down and killed by homophobic players. I’ll post more of the video in a thread. Strong language warning. pic.twitter.com/gN1rsRFz1h
— AJpls (@twitch_ajpls) November 16, 2018
Fallout 76 has an in-game mechanic where there will be little damage taken if a player attacks another player who doesn’t fight back. NathanTheHicc’s group were relentless, continuing the assault until AJ’s character was killed.
The incident highlights one of Fallout 76’s issues: a lack of a in-game reporting function. AJ detailed his problems reporting the assault to Eurogamer.
“The tweet [showing video of the assault] was forwarded to some community managers for the game and they were very kind and helpful,” AJ said. “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.”
Eurogamer also talked to NathanTheHicc, who didn’t apologize for the incident. He says it was just him having fun and doesn’t hate gay people.
“I do not regret the incident,” he told them. “I will not apologize given the opportunity. I don’t plan on doing anything like this in the future but to be fair I didn’t plan the initial incident, I just found them and decided to go through with it.”
Originally banning Nathan and his group for three days, a Bethesda spokesperson confirmed to Eurogamer that they have since been banned permanently.
“We gave an initial ban of three days while our CS team looked into the matter further to verify the individuals involved and what took place,” the studio said. “After additional review, we have now permanently banned the players we’ve identified.”
The Bethesda spokesperson also stated that players have the ability to block other players and also brought up the reporting tools found on Bethesda.net and the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
