Although recent Fallout 76 outrage has primarily centered on Bethesda's bait-and-switch tactics in selling its Power Armor edition of the game, players in-game aren't happy, either. One shocking report is now coming forward that homophobic players went out of their way to make life hell for others, and Bethesda has now taken action by banning them for life.

The incident took place among multiple characters on a Fallout 76 server. According to one of the victims, AJ, who initially reported the incident online, a player by the name of NathanTheHicc approached AJ's group to ask for a Disease Cure item. After the group offered a compliment that either NathanTheHicc's character or outfit was "cute," NathanTheHicc responded with an anti-gay slur and left the area.

Just ten minutes later, AJ explains that NathanTheHicc returned in a group, spouting off more homophobic slurs in the area chat, claiming that his group was coming to "decontaminate the AIDS," among other inflammatory things. NathanTheHicc's group proceeded to attack AJ and his group's characters in-game, but due to Fallout 76's anti-griefing methods, the damage from the attacks was minimal. AJ assumed they'd leave after accomplishing nothing, but instead, NathanTheHicc's group continued attacking until they'd successfully chipped away enough health to kill AJ's group.

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

Other than going through the homophobic attack, the biggest problem came when AJ attempted to report it. Speaking with Eurogamer, he explained that there is no method to report players in-game, and the only way to do so at all is to report it via Bethesda's website. This is a roundabout and frustrating way to go about it on its own, but AJ also claims that when initially given the link to report it to Bethesda, the submission didn't work.

Since the footage appeared online from both AJ and NathanTheHicc, Bethesda initially responded with a 3-day ban for NathanTheHicc while investigating the incident. Shortly after, NathanTheHicc and his group received lifetime bans from Fallout 76. NathanTheHicc has defended his and his group's actions as "playful immaturity" and refused to apologize.

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While trolling is always prevalent in online games, it's no doubt frustrating for players to encounter someone spouting off homophobic vulgarities no easy way to report them. Bethesda does offer players the ability to add others to a personal ban list so that one doesn't have to play with them again, but as AJ points out, it won't help to prevent this kind of thing being done by the same people again to another group.

With any luck, Bethesda is taking a good long look at Fallout 76's myriads of flaws, including its inability to easily report someone while in the game. Players who are interested in playing such "pranks" should keep in mind that doing so will not only ruin another player's day, but could mean saying a permanent goodbye to the game themselves.

Fallout 76 is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: Eurogamer, Twitter