Yesterday, Path of Exile developer Grinding Gear Games and its community fell victim to a highly nonsensical hoax: in a thread on the Legal Advice subreddit, a disabled person said he was banned for using a macro to assist in playing Path of Exile He stated that he had been banned for using a macro to assist in playing Path of Exile. The post sparked debate and outrage and quickly spread throughout Reddit and social media. [A Redditor named poelegalthrowaway00 wrote in a now-deleted post that he was "unable to use one hand and the other finger due to an industrial accident." Here's a link to an image from that thread. They further explained that Path of Exile is unplayable because it requires frequent use of potions to survive, and the potions are tied to the number keys, which must be pressed every few seconds (though this varies depending on the specific character build). He explains, "Since it is physically impossible to press all four keys every few seconds, I use a macro that automatically presses them for me.

The problem here is that using this type of automated program is against Path of Exile's and most multiplayer games' terms of service. Macros that automate specific tasks, such as when to activate healing potions, could be used to undermine the game and gain a competitive edge. In more elaborate cases, macros could be used to play games without human input, as in World of Warcraft's infamous gold-earning bot.

Using macros to assist with disabilities, however, is an entirely different realm. Like many ARPGs, Path of Exile involves a lot of clicking and button pressing, the game moves at a very fast pace, and there is a lot of on-screen action. Aside from basics like rebinding keys, there are not many options built into Path of Exile to make it more enjoyable for more users. Some players have gone to the trouble of creating special character builds for players with disabilities in theory.

In the thread, poelegalthrowaway00 explained that he was banned for using macros and wanted to know if there was any legal recourse against Grinding Gear because he supposedly spent "several hundred dollars" on microtransactions for the game. Naturally, the post immediately drew the sympathy of other redditors, who upvoted the thread to the front page of r/legaladvice. The post then spilled over to Twitter and other social media. The players were upset. Innocent players were caught up in the machinery of an automated system and unjustly banned.

When I saw this thread, I contacted Chris Wilson, CEO and founder of Grinding Gear Games, to see if the poelegalthrowaway00 ban was being investigated. according to Wilson, the studio is investigating the issue. According to Wilson, the studio is looking into the issue, but has been unable to find any cases of players being banned that match the few details of poelegalthrowaway00. Wilson said, "The ban in this case is not in line with our internal policy and we are curious as to what happened here because we can't find any evidence that it occurred."

Meanwhile, backlash on social media was mounting: disability advocates like Able Gamer's Steven Spohn were discussing the incident and calling on Grinding Gear to investigate and withdraw the ban; others like TheGamer and GameRant gaming media also published articles about the original Reddit thread, raising the profile of the lie. Without further leads, however, there was nothing Grinding Gear could do.

Then late last night, poelegalthrowaway00 posted on the Path of Exile subreddit and admitted that the whole thing was a fabrication.

In that second post (which was also quickly deleted along with the original legal advice thread), poelegalthrowaway00 claimed to be an "educator" and was giving a class on "how easy it is (to) manipulate public opinion and discourse through social media."

It was a strange and unexpected turn of events, made even stranger by the fact that poelegalthrowaway00 tried to justify why he spread lies and that Redder should have seen through the bullshit. As if they don't know or understand how easy it is to make things up on the internet. And why choose the Path of Exile community of all places?

However, minutes after that second post was made, it was edited and the original message was replaced by someone claiming to have hacked poelegalthrowaway00's Reddit account. A few minutes later, the post was completely deleted, but not before people took screen captures of it.

Poelegalthrowaway00's admission that he is really a teacher seems as suspect as the original thread. The only thing we know for sure is that this was all a senseless and insensitive hoax.

"Honestly, I feel kind of sick about all of this," Wilson wrote in a follow-up email to me.

"The legitimacy of the real issue has been undermined and the Twitter thread has done us some pretty bad PR damage."

In addition to dragging Grinding Gear through the mud, not to mention the stress it has put on community managers and developers trying to fix the problem, the Twitter threads have also been a major source of frustration.

"Pretending to be a disabled gamer to harass a company is disgusting," Spohn wrote on Twitter after learning the truth.

"People are already skeptical of anyone claiming to be disabled. So congrats, troll. Well done. You have created a world where people with genuine disabilities are less likely to attract the attention of developers."

Spohn's point cannot be understated: many disabled players cannot play the game without appropriate accessibility options. Because many disabled players cannot play games without appropriate accessibility options, they are often forced to petition developers to include these tools or rely on third-party solutions such as Microsoft's Adaptive Controller. Often, that's why advocates like Spohn and charitable organizations like Special Effect are working to raise awareness.

The relationship between fans and developers can often be adversarial. Players feel that when they want something in a game to change, the best option is to speak up collectively. This is true whether they want a weapon nerf or want to stand up for a fellow player who they feel has been treated unfairly. It is not uncommon for such a call to mobilize the masses to go viral. This is an exploitable dynamic, and poelegalthrowaway00 fooled quite a few people, exactly as they intended. However, what poelegalthrowaway00 was trying to claim is completely undermined by the fact that they actively contributed to the suffering and obliteration that is prevalent in many online communities.

It is as if Smokey the Bear burned down an abominable forest in an attempt to educate people about the dangers of forest fires. Doing harm just to prove you can is horribly malicious; assuming poelegalthrowaway00 is telling the truth about being a teacher, I pity any student stuck learning from that bastard.

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