Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer is taking a lot of heat online for recent decisions to close beloved studios like Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. Last night the long-time gaming exec was apparently exploring the wasteland in Fallout 76 when another player nuked his entire campsite.
“It’s not much too it I’ve been planning to catch him for a while now to see if he would agree to a fight,” user real1090jake told Kotaku over Twitter DMs. “Trying to take him down was just a personal goal for me after I finished the main quest line.” He shared some additional screenshots from the encounter which has been weeks in the making. “The Big General, Phil better not let me catch him,” real1090jake tweeted back in April.
Spencer’s reputation for being the gamer’s gaming boss has taken a major hit this year on the back of several big controversies. The first was mass layoffs at Microsoft in January that hit Blizzard and other development teams. The second was a new strategy to begin bringing some major first-party console exclusives to PlayStation 5 like Sea of Thieves, which some Xbox fans saw as the company abandoning an ecosystem it spent decades building up. Then there was this week’s closures of four more studios, including the team behind critically acclaimed 2023 rhythm action platformer, Hi-Fi Rush.
Last night, Twitter user Sam_Snydes shared a screenshot of Fallout 76 that immediately went viral. It showed the campsite of the exec, whose Xbox handle “P3" and penchant for playing hundreds of hours of games each year is well known among fans, engulfed in red circle indicating a recently exploded nuke. “Lmao someone nuked Phil Spencer’s camp in Fallout 76,” Sam_Snydes wrote.
Real1090jake immediately took credit in the comments. “Guilty,” he wrote back with shrug emoji. Attached was additional evidence, including a screenshot of Spencer waving to him and a brief video clip of the the exec’s campsite shrouded in radioactive fog. “He was the final boss in my eyes,” real1090jake told Kotaku. “In a RPG I prefer to be the bad guy.”
He said he’d been working toward the goal of dropping a nuke on Spencer since completing Fallout 76's main questline last month. “He jumps around the map because he’s always immediately crowded by players,” real1090snake said. “I honestly just wanted my 1v1 but he wouldn’t attack me back he waved and did a couple of hearts when I caught him alone.”
While the timing has made the episode meme fodder for gamers dunking on a brand that’s currently having one of the worst weeks in its history, real1090snake wasn’t trying to make any sort of statement about the status of Xbox or the recent layoffs. “I joked about attacking him because he hurt our feelings...[but] it’s been my mission weeks before,” he said.
Instead it was more about embracing role-play in the wasteland and chasing a new meta objective. There’s no actual Xbox achievement for nuking Phil Spencer but if there were it would probably be one of the rarest in the platform’s history. “This was a calculated attack lol I have no beef with Phil,” real1090snake tweeted last night. “Phil’s cool Fallout 76 is cool.”