A Path of Exile player has admitted they were not banned for using macros for accessibility - in fact, they never used the macros and were never banned at all. The news comes after developer Grinding Gear Games conducted an internal search. In the hoax's wake, discussions have sprung up about the potential negative effects on accessibility that fake incidents like this can have.
The gaming industry is lacking in accessibility options. Bright spots have come around lately, like The Last of Us Part 2's accessibility settings, but many games penalize players who elect to play on easier difficulties by giving them less experience, fewer item drops, or even flat-out patronizing them, as is the case in Cave Story and Wolfenstein: The New Order. The struggles of gamers with disabilities to make games more accessible means hoaxes like this can be potentially harmful.
The hoax began with Reddit user poelegalthrowaway00, who made a now-deleted post (via Kotaku) on a legal subreddit explaining that an accident limited the use of most of their fingers. As such, they bound a macro to refresh several potion buffs at once, then claimed the use of the macro resulted in a ban on their Path of Exile account. When news of the post reached the Path of Exile Twitter, Grinding Gear Games said it found no evidence of the incident. According to Kotaku, poelegalthrowaway00 later made another now-deleted post, which acted as a confession. The post partially read as follows.
"I am an educator and did this as a demonstration for my class on how easy it [is] to manipulate public opinion and discourse on social media. I also wrote the top response, and had one of my grad students post it. [...] Path of Exile was chosen as a subject because most of my students are familiar with gaming, and it's a relatively harmless area for this exercise, relative to something like politics. [...] Apologies if this caused stress for anyone. [...] Using Path of Exile also demonstrated how simple it is to convince people into thinking you’re an expert in a field even when you have no experience. If you were fooled by this or felt any emotion such as outrage, etc, don’t feel bad. Everyone falls for these tricks. [...] Rather, take this as an example to be more skeptical of anything that appears on social media."
Many were quick to say it was a cruel trick. On Twitter, Steven Spohn, the COO of the AbleGamers charity who had previously been supporting poelegalthrowaway00, changed his stance when the news of the hoax broke. He tweeted, "Pretending to be a disabled gamer to harass a company is the lowest of low. People are already skeptical of people claiming to be disabled. [...] You made the world a harder place for legitimately disabled people to get the attention of devs."
Before being deleted, poelegalthrowaway00's post was edited to claim the user was hacked, but this seems unlikely given the detail of their initial Path of Exile ban hoax explanation. In poelegalthrowaway00's attempt to show how easily people can be fooled online, they ended up only providing an example of potentially harmful trolling.
Source: Kotaku, Steven Spohn/Twitter