Popular Fallout 76 Player Allegedly Banned For Reporting A Glitch

Fallout 76 is infamous for being rife with bugs and controversy. It looks like Bethesda has stirred up a bit more of both today.

Jared Burkett was a popular Fallout 76 player who kept track of all the glitches and bugs in the game. He created Map 76, an effort to catalog every item on the map. While players have been appreciative of his efforts, Bethesda apparently wasn't. Burkett says that after reporting a pretty significant exploit, he was banned from the game. 

Burkett wasn't using this exploit, mind you; he just noticed that some ne'er-do-well players were glitching out The Purveyor in order to pay regular bottle caps in exchange for Legendary items. This is far from the first time that Burkett had reported a glitch like this, too. He does use third party tools in order to find these bugs and give Bethesda the information it needs to fix them. But never before had there been any indication that this would get him banned. 

Shortly after, his site — which served as a database of Fallout 76 items — was taken down and replaced with an explanation of his side of the story. According to Burkett, he and several other people in his group were banned.

"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," Burkett said. "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."

When Bethesda finally got back to him, it was originally to say that no, he couldn't get a refund for his Fallout 1st membership. This didn't sit well with Burkett, or the community that rallied around him. Maybe this outrage is the reason why Bethesda made an "exception" and refunded Burkett for his unusable subscription. 

Watching the game from afar, Burkett is still upset with the state of things, saying that each new update introduces more bugs that he isn't around to report on. He says he's given up on Fallout 76 entirely, not the first and far from the last fan to feel sour about Bethesda's decisions regarding the game.