The rest of the night I just felt drained. We talked about what happened, made sure we were all okay, and kept playing. The three of us stream and put ourselves out there on the internet and are not strangers to homophobic comments but this was so extreme. "In the moment, I was just in shock," he said. "After additional review, we have now permanently banned the players we've identified."ĪJ told Eurogamer how he felt at the time of the attack, saying he worried how it might have impacted younger players had it happened to someone else. "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," a Bethesda spokesperson told Eurogamer. NathanTheHicc won't get the chance to repeat the incident, however, because Bethesda has now banned him and his friends from Fallout 76 permanently. 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." I will not apologise given the opportunity. You can call that evil but I think it's just playful immaturity. 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. NathanTheHicc, a senior in high school from the US, said: "My version of the incident is more or less the same as the public has taken it, the only differences being the fact that I don't hate gay people. Over email with Eurogamer, NathanTheHicc confirmed Bethesda had been in touch to say he was banned for three days and said he was told "this would be our only warning". The video is titled: "Cleansing of the queers." NathanTheHicc then uploaded footage of his initial encounter with AJ and his friends to his own YouTube channel. It seems very difficult to report players." The site asked for a video file of the incident but the accepted file types weren't video files. "We were given a link to report the players but had issues with it. "The tweet was forwarded to some community managers for the game and they were very kind and helpful," AJ said. Bethesda community managers sent AJ a link to Bethesda's website-based player report function, but AJ found it didn't work properly. "Just so it wouldn't happen again."ĪJ took to Twitter to highlight the incident, he said, because there's no in-game player report function in Fallout 76. "We changed servers after we respawned," AJ said. "They stuck with it and even joked about how 'this is the strongest queer I've ever seen'."Įventually, NathanTheHicc and his friends killed AJ's character. "The game notified me that if I didn't fight back, they would do limited damage so I didn't fight back and hoped they would just get bored and leave," AJ said. Fallout 76's player versus player system employs an anti-griefing mechanic that means if you don't fight back, your attacker does negligible damage. He replied, 'I don't fuck with that homo shit' and left."ġ0 minutes later, NathanTheHicc returned with friends to harass AJ and his group. "The three of us were having a good time and talking to him and then one of us commented on his character or his characters outfit being cute. In a follow-up interview with Eurogamer, AJ said the harassment began slightly earlier, when NathanTheHicc approached the group to ask for a Disease Cure item. This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. #Fallout #Fallout76 /zwPuz7AbsG- AJpls ? November 16, 2018
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One of the victims, AJ from Chicago, took to Twitter to publicise the incident with disturbing video footage that has been viewed over 16,000 times.Ĭalled themselves the "gay eliminators" "cleansing the wasteland of the queers" "know what we did to your people back then, we killed them" THIS is the stuff said to us tonight when playing Fallout. Their ringleader, who goes by the username NathanTheHicc, is heard saying "queer down" and "decontaminate the aids".
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The group of high-level players proceeded to follow and kill the other group of players over a period of about 10 minutes.
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This is by design - Fallout 76 is a multiplayer-only game that is meant to spark interesting player interaction. The move relates to an incident in which a group of Fallout 76 players targeted and harassed another group of players, saying over the proximity chat: "we have come to eliminate all gays."įallout 76 employs a proximity-based chat system which means, by default, you can speak to and hear other players when you're near them. The following contains language some may find offensive. Bethesda has banned a group of Fallout 76 players for life after a shocking in-game homophobic attack.