Back in the spring of 2022, I was still crawling through the Lands Between, dying to Runebears and getting teabagged by invaders. Elden Ring felt like a fever dream we all shared together—one of those rare games that swallowed the entire internet. So I was right in the thick of it when one of the most bizarre gaming headlines flashed across my feed: Elon Musk had stepped into the conversation. And what he said made me laugh so hard I nearly choked on my soda. He was defending hacked panties.
The controversy brewed from a bug that allowed players to drop illegitimate items, including a certain infamous piece of unmentionables, into other players‘ worlds. If you picked one up, you risked a swift, merciless ban. Elon, clearly frustrated, tweeted something like: “Elden Ring is incredible, but why are extremely gory death/murder scenes ok, but panties get you banned!?” I remember reading that and thinking, “Well, he’s not wrong about the gore.” I mean, this is a game where you can get pinned down and impaled by a grafted monstrosity, where blood sprays like a crimson fountain. Yet a scrap of hacked fabric caused this much uproar? It felt like some cosmic joke. But you know, the devil’s in the details—or rather, in the game files.
The panties weren‘t the real issue. They were just the funniest-looking symptom of a deeper sickness. That item was never meant to exist; it was a hacked piece of contraband, injected by modifying the game’s code. When a player gave it to you online, your save file suddenly flagged a mismatch with the intended experience. FromSoftware‘s anti-cheat software doesn’t care if an item is cute, scandalous, or a literal death sword—it cares that it’s unauthorized. So all those poor Tarnished who gleefully picked up the forbidden laundry found themselves staring at a ban message while the rest of us cringed. A gory decapitation is designed. A hacked thong is an intrusion.
I get why Elon’s question stuck, though. It highlighted a weird dissonance. The game serves up grotesque body horror on a silver platter, yet policing digital underwear became the headline. It‘s like the Lands Between have an honor system that treats panties worse than patricide. I bet Patches would have a field day with that logic. Honestly, the whole thing felt like a meme come to life—so much so that for weeks, my friends and I would jokingly ask each other in co-op sessions, “You got any of them banned panties, mate?” It was the sort of inside joke that only the community could cook up.
But here’s what got lost in the laughter: FromSoftware moved fast. The very next patch fixed the bug, slamming the door on unauthorized item transfers. I watched the community exhale. Those terrifying tales of getting banned just for being curious faded away. Over the years, the dev team kept refining the online experience, so by the time the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion launched in 2024, such exploits were ancient history. Looking back from 2026, it feels like a weird, nostalgic footnote. The game has matured into an even more polished masterpiece, and that era of hacked items seems almost quaint. Almost.
I still wonder sometimes what happened to the players who got caught up in the drama. Were their pleas heard? Did they ever resurface in the Roundtable Hold, reformed and carrying only proper, developer-sanctioned greatswords? Probably not. But their sacrifice warned the rest of us: don‘t pick up strange gifts from strangers. Not even if they’re very, very soft.
It‘s funny, really. Out of all the bosses I’ve vanquished and all the lore I‘ve unraveled, the Panty Ban of ’22 remains one of my most vivid Elden Ring memories. Not because of the outrage, but because it proved that even in a world drowning in grimdark aesthetics, the human mind fixates on the silliest contradiction. And somewhere, out in the expanse of interstellar ambition, Elon Musk is probably still asking why. I just hope he never finds the Deathbed Smalls.
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