You’d better watch out, Fallout 76 item-dupers. The 'honest' players in the community are coming for you, torches and pitchforks in hand.

Now, it’s safe to say that Fallout 76 hasn’t had quite as smooth a ride as it would have liked. Arriving in the wake of the hugely successful Fallout 4, this was a new sort of wasteland adventure. The developer’s first shot at a new genre, and… well, opinions have been mixed.

What with the canvas bag controversy that surrounded the collector’s edition, a whole variety of technical issues and Bethesda’s less-than-satisfactory responses to it all, Fallout 76 has been a bit of a PR disaster. Nevertheless, the franchise (and 76 itself) has quite the fanbase, and they’re out to defend it. Literally; vigilante style.

So, what kind of hot water has the game gotten itself into now? Backlash about the rabid item duplication that’s been plaguing the game, that’s what.

A while back, players found ways to manipulate the item system, creating infinite copies of… well, whatever they fancy, really. Needless to say, this is a horrible state of affairs for any game with an economy, but becomes something even worse when you consider that very ‘rare’ weapons are being bought with real money in shady transactions.

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Nobody’s safe in Appalachia right now, as Polygon reports: Even those minding their own business in Pacifist Mode are being one-shot by players who have duplicated the once-rare bobbleheads (which briefly boost your stats). Those players who aren’t down with these sorts of shenanigans are trying to fight back in any way they can.

Here’s the situation as it stands, then: Self-righteous players are roaming the world of Fallout 76 (presumably in Stetson-wearing bands of rugged do-gooders, Magnificent Seven-style), determined to find these item-dupers wherever they can, bring grim ends to their characters and dispose of their loot.

You can see the problem here, can’t you? As is so often the case, you may have good intentions, but it’s just inevitable that mistakes will be made, non-dupers will be hounded, things will spiral even further out of control.

Over on Reddit, one player wrote of their encounter with one of these vigilante players:

“Tl;dr: Guy accuses me of being a cheater because I have an explosive weapon. Says he will kill me if I don’t show him my inventory to prove I'm not a duper. I refuse, he attacks me and I kill him. I give in after several annoying messages and send him screenshots of my inventory, clearly showing I'm not a duper. He still insists I'm a cheater and tries to kill me several more times before I finally block him and server hop.”

Sadly, this is typical of some players’ experiences just now. One thing’s clear: Bethesda have a problem on their hands.