Fallout 76 duped items are being removed from inventories

Fallout 76 is undergoing a spot of maintenance today, with Bethesda promising to finally get rid of duped items, stripping players of their ill-gotten gains. You may return to find some of your favourite gear missing when servers come back online.

Item duping has been an issue in the survival romp for a while, unsettling the economy and pissing off players not taking advantage of the exploit. Bethesda's been aware of it for just as long, but so far the developer has been unable to put a stop to it, despite claiming to have fixed it in previous updates.

An update two weeks ago saw several issues return to the West Virginian wasteland, including bobby pins becoming heavy and the item duplication bug. In the cases where Bethesda has removed a duplication exploit successfully, players just find other ways to clone their stuff. This update doesn't appear to tackle any exploits, but it will deal with the items they spawned, removing them from player inventories and stashes.

"These item removals are part of our ongoing efforts to address exploit abuse and make positive changes for the overall in-game economy," Bethesda says. "These removals are highly-targeted at a specific list of items. Players who have used an exploit to dupe items, or acquired duped items from other players, may find those items removed from their accounts once maintenance is complete."

While a lot of players consider it a serious problem and have taken to a multitude of threads on Reddit and elsewhere to raise the issue, Bethesda claims that only a small percentage of accounts actually have duped items. Most players shouldn't notice a difference.

The last time I popped my head in, it wasn't long before I was disconnected and lost all of my quest progress. Bethesda says a server-side fix is also being applied that will reduce the disconnects. Several other attempts have been to reduce them, however, so I won't hold my breath.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.