Fallout 76 Bans a Player For Collecting Too Much Ammo

[Reverie]

According to VGR, Bethesda has banned a player in Fallout 76 who has (apparently) legitimately amassed a large amount of ammo. They accused the player of exploitation, but apparently, this person has simply been playing for around 900 hours.

I would be so angry at this! If there’s one thing I collect everywhere in Fallout, it’s ammo of any kind. I can totally see how he would have a huge amount by now.

And then there's the fact that he put 900 hours into Fallout 76 ... well, I don't need to go on about it, lol.

 

[naossano]

Looks like someone in the management really wants to sink the company...

 

[RangerBoo]

LOL! Bethesda bans the one player that gave a shit about their shit game! God, the people who run Bethesda are idiots.

 

[HydroFlame]

Now that I think about it, what they did was cruel because this guy had surgery and was playing the game as something to occupy his time. I'm not saying he shouldn't be ashamed of playing this game, but nonetheless Bethesda banned him without knowing the full story it seems.

 

[Big No]

It's a bit ambiguous. Supposedly he had 225k ultracide ammo which is extremely hard to get even if you play night and day. At the same time people say 76 tracks each time you pick up an item, so you could drop two bullets and pick them back up and the game would say you've collected four. So maybe he cheated, maybe not, dunno.

 

[Risewild]

It's a bit ambiguous. Supposedly he had 225k ultracide ammo which is extremely hard to get even if you play night and day. At the same time people say 76 tracks each time you pick up an item, so you could drop two bullets and pick them back up and the game would say you've collected four. So maybe he cheated, maybe not, dunno.

In this case, I doubt he cheated.
He had already made extensive guides on how to farm (legally, not duping) ammo before he got banned.
Here is his theory on how Bethesda got such large numbers for his ammo:

Similarly, I have never had such a ridiculous amount of ammo. What I have done, however, is trade ammo back and forth between my main and secondary account as I try to decide on what guns I aim to focus on. Given the sheer amount of time I have spent playing I have legitimately collected ludicrous amounts of ammo.

My theory now is that the system is able to detect when you pick something up, but not where you got it from, nor if you dropped it. It seemingly just keeps a totals tally.

He also explains how he got so much ultracide ammo:

To further describe my recent play time. I started leveling a second character for the first time. To do that I transferred over several thousand ammo and some armor/guns for various levels to use. Being that my main has stupid amount of play time I have a ton of ultracite ammo. 50x stable flux is easily attainable in an hour. Combine ammosmith and super duper perk cards, and you can craft huge amounts of ammo at once. In addition ultracite ammo crafts more ammo by default than regular ammo. So with the above perks you get even further bonuses.

And how he thinks Bethesda got a really large number of ammo:

To get all the ammo/gear from 1 character to another I had to move it to my second account to then shift it over to my main account on the second character. Sort of confusing but 1a >2>1b. I then decided that character b would primarily be grenades and mines. So I opted to move back the ammo. 1b>2>1a. Character A on account 1 now has all of the ammo again while I decide which guns I intend to specialize with. After I choose the guns (shotguns in this case) I give most of the other non used ammo back to account 2. During all of this I put the ammo into world containers, as that is far less hassle than the trade menu. And in multiple occasions I would have picked it all up again on 1 account. More or less fat fingering the R key to pick up everything while I'm alt tabbed on the wrong account.

Usually I have a stupid amount of ammo, still nothing close to the numbers they state. I can't access my account now to see how much ammo I have. In each of the ammo trades to the mule account it would've involved thousands and thousands of ammo. As stated in other posts, I know how to very quickly and easily farm ammo.

So it seems Bethesda made a system that checks when a character acquires ammo, and if a character acquires over a certain amount, it triggers a ban.
It also seem like the system fails to check where the ammo came from, so if you keep looting a container with 1000 ammo (for example), then put it all back, loot it again, put it all back, loot again (and so on), the system will detect that a character somehow came into possession of 1000+1000+1000 (and so on), and trigger the ban once all of those 1000 accumulates enough to reach the "limit", even if that ammo is always the same and only 1000 in total.

 

[Atomkilla]

Brilliant design.

 

[Korin]

I follow the sub-reddit this guy posted in quite closely and there are some other considerations to be had here.

He had already made extensive guides on how to farm (legally, not duping) ammo before he got banned.

He made these guides after he was already banned.

Here is his theory on how Bethesda got such large numbers for his ammo...
He also explains how he got so much ultracide ammo...
And how he thinks Bethesda got a really large number of ammo...

He was quoted by Bethesda as having 360,000 ultracite ammo (not regular ammo). You have to understand (from someone that plays the game) that ultracite ammo has much harder to acquire components than regular ammo, in particular all the stable flux necessary. He also stated that he wasn't trading for materials and was crafting it all on his own which makes the claim more dubious.

His theory of "trading back and forth" to inflate the ammo numbers was also really dubious because it doesn't make sense to trade it back and forth enough times to reach numbers of that level.

In any case, he's unbanned now. He shared some screenshots claiming he was innocent but obviously he could have just dumped whatever ammo he had. We'll never know for sure. He had one of the most upvoted posts on the sub-reddit and even had community managers involved looking at his support ticket. They still didn't unban him so I am highly skeptical of his claims.

His banning certainly got a lot of traction in the media though which was easy to do because they're looking for fodder for the "Fallout 76 sucks" hate train.

 

[Risewild]

In any case, he's unbanned now. He shared some screenshots claiming he was innocent but obviously he could have just dumped whatever ammo he had. We'll never know for sure.

I will trust him more than Bethesda in this case, to be honest.
If they unbanned him, then they also had no proof he was cheating. Or they would show the proof and stand their ground.

If they said he had so much ultracite ammo, it would be easy for them to show the logs of him having that much ammo, but they were quiet for ages, and in the end they just unbanned him.
What I see is someone who spent a lot of time and effort explaining how he plays the game, trying to find and show all kinds of (possible) proof of it, while Bethesda shows nothing and says nothing.

Even if he cheats, the silence and inactivity of Bethesda is quite unprofessional and raises eye brows.
If Bethesda has real evidence of him cheating, then the unban is also a bad move, since he will probably just cheat again. Because he knows Bethesda will bend to public pressure.

In a paid multiplayer online game with anti-cheat measures. I would like those measures to be transparent, and proof of misconduct/cheating to be collected and shown to (at least) the perpetrator.
If the perpetrator makes a fuss, then the game should have a public place (official forums thread, for example), where the game company can post the proof and shut up those that whine about "unfair ban".

 

[Korin]

I will trust him more than Bethesda in this case, to be honest.
If they unbanned him, then they also had no proof he was cheating. Or they would show the proof and stand their ground.

If they said he had so much ultracite ammo, it would be easy for them to show the logs of him having that much ammo, but they were quiet for ages, and in the end they just unbanned him.
What I see is someone who spent a lot of time and effort explaining how he plays the game, trying to find and show all kinds of (possible) proof of it, while Bethesda shows nothing and says nothing.

Even if he cheats, the silence and inactivity of Bethesda is quite unprofessional and raises eye brows.
If Bethesda has real evidence of him cheating, then the unban is also a bad move, since he will probably just cheat again. Because he knows Bethesda will bend to public pressure.

In a paid multiplayer online game with anti-cheat measures. I would like those measures to be transparent, and proof of misconduct/cheating to be collected and shown to (at least) the perpetrator.
If the perpetrator makes a fuss, then the game should have a public place (official forums thread, for example), where the game company can post the proof and shut up those that whine about "unfair ban".

I don't know what their reasoning was but if they gave specific proof for him they'd have to give proof for everybody. They had previously released an official statement that banned accounts were without a doubt legitimate bans with no wiggle room for error. There was a ton of people banned at the same time this guy, a lot of posts on Reddit proclaiming innocence. If you just looked at most of their post histories the majority of them were admitted dupers or had actively traded and worked with accounts that were duping. The only reason this post got traction was because he made a "game tips" post and said he'd played 900 hours which made it to the top of the sub-reddit (he was already banned when he made the post). Then made a second post saying he'd gotten banned after the first one became popular, so he became a sort of martyr ("why would a guy who contributed so much to the community be a cheater?"). It picked up a lot of traction because it was a good story and fueled a lot of anti-Fallout 76 sentiment. It made it into the gaming news cycle because it was a good story about how Bethesda was a huge fuck up. That's basically the kind of news that sells. It's the same thing on Youtube. He had quite a few Youtubers cover his plight though the majority of them ignored any kind of critical thinking and held him up as a kind of Jesus character that'd been crucified. It's just easier to hate on Fallout 76 because everyone is so willing to do so. Truly the Nickelback/Justin Bieber of video games.

Anyway, I still think he's likely full of shit.

 

[Big No]

Are we really going to go through the "76 is only considered bad because Youtubers said so" route?

 

[Risewild]

I don't know what their reasoning was but if they gave specific proof for him they'd have to give proof for everybody. They had previously released an official statement that banned accounts were without a doubt legitimate bans with no wiggle room for error.

And yet, they admitted error and unbanned the guy. This is also the company that releases official statements about how they will be more transparent about what the new patches add/edit/change and then players notice all kinds of stuff they never mention on the pact notes. This is also the company that said canvas bags and only gave those for free to top youtubers while giving sucky nylon bags to the rest of the consumers, this is the company that replied to a customer inquiry about what they where going to do about not giving the right bag with "We are not going to do anything". And only changed their mind after legal action was brought against them. This is the same company that refused to accept product returns after the game was installed (which in many countries is illegal), this is the company that promised a nice rum bottle and delivered a normal bottle inside a plastic cover (that was supposed to be the bottle)... I can go on and on.

I have no doubts many are dupers, but why did Bethesda backtracked on this guy, if it was without a doubt a legitimate ban and without any explanation?
So it was without a doubt a legitimate ban, then why did they unbanned this cheater? If it was legitimate, they just let a cheater back into the game... If it wasn't a cheater, then it wasn't without a doubt... This whole thing doesn't paint Bethesda in any good light, because they didn't do or say any of the the right things. It placed them into a position where their words do not match their actions, since there is this difference, they are lying in some way.

 

[AbullSinCara]

They can ban you in fallout 76? huh that's new, never heard about this before.

Then the fallout series really gone downhill if they take freedom.

 

[Korin]

And yet, they admitted error and unbanned the guy... why did Bethesda backtracked on this guy, if it was without a doubt a legitimate ban and without any explanation?

They didn't admit any error because there was none, the bans were always temporary... another thing the media glazed over. The e-mails they sent out about account bans said the accounts would be re-instated when they were able to fix their inventories. You can literally just read the e-mail:

 

[Risewild]

They didn't admit any error because there was none, the bans were always temporary... another thing the media glazed over. The e-mails they sent out about account bans said the accounts would be re-instated when they were able to fix their inventories. You can literally just read the e-mail:

View attachment 12050

So it's fine to just reinstate all the cheaters? I guess they really can't afford to lose any player .

 

[Kilus]

They didn't admit any error because there was none, the bans were always temporary... another thing the media glazed over. The e-mails they sent out about account bans said the accounts would be re-instated when they were able to fix their inventories. You can literally just read the e-mail:

View attachment 12050

When are you going to invite this guy to your murder house?

 

[Korin]

So it's fine to just reinstate all the cheaters? I guess they really can't afford to lose any player .

Pretty much your problem is you can't look at any Bethesda related issue objectively. I'm not arguing about whether canvas bags were a fiasco or whether the game was poorly developed. You can have any number of legitimate complaints about the game and the company. I have a number of threads on Reddit tearing Bethesda a new butthole about a number of issues. Those things can all be true. I'm just telling you how it is with 900 hours guy and other bans. People that were identified as dupers were banned, people that were flagged as having an impossible amount of rare items were temp banned. That was probably a happy medium for people that acquired duped loot but didn't themselves exploit the system. They could have banned everyone who had a two-shot explosive weapon but instead they opted to remove duplicates and let people keep one copy. I am just explaining what the bans were for and the context under which 900 hour guy was banned/unbanned.

Also last time the numbers were in about million or so people were still playing Fallout 76, though the popular shitpost comment on most game and social media is "people still play this game??". Yes, obviously people are still playing. People just live in an echo chamber of fake news.

 

[Korin]

When are you going to invite this guy to your murder house?

I'm too busy doing this right now:

 

[Kilus]

I'm too busy doing this right now:

I mean that is a good effort and everything but your ambitions exceed Bethesda's engine capability. I mean look at the lacklustre animations and physics.

 

[Korin]

I mean that is a good effort and everything but your ambitions exceed Bethesda's engine capability. I mean look at the lacklustre animations and physics.

Haha! I'm pretty sure the game wasn't designed to do this... such a shame. All that brahmin blood on my hands for nothing.

In other news, I'm part way through making a porta-potty that electrocutes people to death. It's beautiful.