Fallout 76 players permabanned for anti-gay harassment

Multiple Fallout 76 gamers have received lifetime bans from the game, following a harassment incident littered with homophobic slurs that went viral over social media.

As reported by Eurogamer, Bethesda Softworks originally handed out a three-day suspension to at least one player, shown in the Twitter video, a day after Fallout 76’s Nov. 14 launch. As the ringleader of a group of harassers, he peppered the target with things like, “We have come to eliminate all gays,” and anti-gay epithets. Later on in the game, the group tracked down the three players, ambushed and killed them — even though in Fallout 76’s PvP, another player’s attacks only do minor damage if fire is not returned.

One of the players attacked posted these two videos on the night of Nov. 15, calling Bethesda Softworks’ attention to them. Warning: Offensive language in the audio.

The person identified as the primary instigator told Eurogamer that he was a high school senior, and that Bethesda initially gave him only a three-day ban. (He also uploaded video capture from his perspective to his YouTube, entitled “Cleansing of the queers.”) He expressed no remorse for his behavior but insisted, “I don’t hate gay people.”

“It was just a late night of having fun and after the first encounter (seen on my channel) we felt it would be fun to offend them somehow,” he said. “You can call that evil, but I think it’s just playful immaturity.”

But then, to Eurogamer, Bethesda said that it followed up that “initial ban” with a permanent ban for the entire group of harassers identified in the video. A Bethesda spokesperson added that the company “will not tolerate this kind of behavior by any of our players, nor toward any of our players.”

A ban from multiplayer is effectively a ban from all of Fallout 76, although theoretically someone could create a new Bethesda.net account (they are free) and use that to play the game. They lose all progress and anything associated with the old account, however.

That said, the harassment victim pointed out that Fallout 76 has no capability for reporting another player to moderators from within the game. And doing so through Bethesda.net was described as a cumbersome and even broken process.

A Bethesda representative reminded that players can block other players in Fallout 76 (even permanently), but this mostly means you won’t show up on the map of those you block. They can still engage you normally if they happen to run into you in-world. The player who made the report reasoned that simply blocking a harrasser isn’t enough; the antagonizers deserve a sanction to keep them from doing it to other players.