Bethesda confirms bans for visiting hidden Fallout 76 “developer room”

Fallout 76 developer Bethesda has confirmed it is issuing temporary bans to players who access a hidden "developer room" full of lucrative and unreleased items for the online game.

News of the room's existence on Fallout 76 servers started leaking out publicly last week, with videos showing an area filled with boxes containing every legitimate item in the game, as well as a few cosmetics and weapons that have yet to be officially released (and a curious human-like NPC named "Wooby.") Details of the apparent teleport hack being used to access the room in the PC version of the game were harder to come by without lurking in private Discord channels and hacking forums, though.

Soon after public discovery of the rooms, Bethesda started automatically issuing temporary bans for players who accessed it. The company reportedly also sent banned players an e-mail message asking them to "please describe the way [the developer room] was accessed in a reply to this email. This detail should provide the information necessary for us to correct any corruption issues on this side and safely release this account and return these characters back into the world."

That email seemed to leave open the possibility that some users were inadvertently stumbling on the room without hacking the game. In a translated statement provided to Eurogamer, though, Bethesda now confirms that the room was "only accessible to PC players that are using 3rd party applications to get into these areas."

Bethesda also confirms in the statement that "in an effort to ensure the integrity of these characters and accounts, these accounts are being temporarily disabled pending further investigation. Players that have accessed these areas and have had their accounts impacted are encouraged to contact our support team."

Previous Fallout games have featured similar "dev rooms" that could be easily accessed via console commands. But the discovery of the dev room in Fallout 76 has had a more profound effect on the online game's economy by unleashing a trove of unearned and otherwise unreleased items onto some servers. Some players reportedly used dummy accounts to access the room and then sell or give the items to other players, who could then avoid Bethesda's bans. Reddit trading post Market76 had to ban posts advertising items from the dev room that are "not legitimately obtainable right now."

Last month, Fallout 76 also faced widespread problems with a duplication glitch that let players create infinite copies of arbitrary items. While the discovery of the dev room probably had less of an impact on legitimate players, it's still not a great sign for a game that has already had its fair share of issues since its November launch.