Fallout 76 has been rocked by yet another major bug that played out just before Christmas. Hackers were able to open up the inventory of other players and help themselves to everything within, as if the player was a loot chest. This is obviously a major problem, as the hackers could take everything a player had earned.
One of the exploiters posted a video of the hack in action, writing in the video’s description: “A new hack was introduced earlier today that allows for stealing other players entire inventories, here’s a little bit of some fun we had with it.”
Over 500 players have been affected on camera; it’s unclear how many have been robbed overall.
Bethesda has responded on the Fallout 76 subreddit on Dec. 24, with a post entitled “An Update on the Current PC Exploit”.
We are investigating reports of a PC-only exploit that could be abused by cheaters, which may have resulted in a few players losing items that their characters had equipped. We have been actively working toward a solution for this and have a fix that we are currently evaluating for release today.
While we’ve determined that only a small number of characters have been negatively affected, we are taking this very seriously and resolving this is currently our top priority.
We would like to apologize to those of you who were impacted by this exploit. We want to make this right, and we are currently looking into ways we may be able to compensate you. If you believe you have been affected, please let us know by submitting a ticket to our Customer Support team.
Fallout 76 has had a very unstable December, even by the game’s usual standards. Earlier this month, players uncovered an exploit that allowed them to spawn NPCs and assets within the world. Players reported seeing the Prydwen, the Fallout 4 Brotherhood of Steel zeppelin, spawned into the world.
These bugs and exploits come in the wake of Fallout First, a paid subscription service that grants players in-game cosmetics and quality of life features … including friends-only private servers. When the public servers are filled with exploits that can lose you your entire inventory, Fallout First feels less like an upgrade and more like a mandatory protective feature for many players. (Fallout First itself would later suffer reports of broken private servers and vanishing scrap.)
Ironically, one of the biggest sources of support in battling this exploit comes from the architects of a previous game-breaking bug. Item dupers are offering legendary armor and weapons to players who have lost their inventory to this Christmas exploit.
The next major patch for Fallout 76 is Wastelanders, a major expansion that will bring human NPCs into the game. Wastelanders was delayed until the first quarter of 2020, which lasts until the end of March. It seems as though before Bethesda can tackle adding their own NPCs to the game, they’ll need to wrangle the ones that players have spawned first.
