The GTA modders aren't happy...
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I know some of you are avid GTAO players (Grand Theft Auto Online). Last week Rockstar (aka R*, makers of the GTA series) pushed out a patch that included the much-maligned BattlEye software, which (in short) is intended to prevent cheating and third-party mods. They're probably better at it than R* ever was. For years, R* has pushed out updates that try to mitigate said cheating and modding; it's been mostly a futile cat and mouse game. And it's only now that they've decided to start relying on a third-party to take care of that for them. And the modders ain't happy. Don't get me wrong, they've managed to tweak their mods in very little time so they work again, but they're still unhappy and they've decided to take it a step further. Since then, R*'s servers have been the target of DDoS attacks on an on-and-off basis. R*'s own service status page doesn't show it (most of the time I check), but [this page](https://downdetector.co.uk/status/gta5/) shows reported outages and shows definite spikes. I've experienced these outages myself...the game launches, but you can only go into story mode (which is completely offline); the whole online side of it is unavailable as it fails to log you in. The game's now over a decade old, yet still generates over half a billion dollars a year for them (according to multiple sources). If these outages annoy enough players, this is bound to start affecting them financially sooner or later. I'm really curious at this point to see who's gonna blink first.
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I know some of you are avid GTAO players (Grand Theft Auto Online). Last week Rockstar (aka R*, makers of the GTA series) pushed out a patch that included the much-maligned BattlEye software, which (in short) is intended to prevent cheating and third-party mods. They're probably better at it than R* ever was. For years, R* has pushed out updates that try to mitigate said cheating and modding; it's been mostly a futile cat and mouse game. And it's only now that they've decided to start relying on a third-party to take care of that for them. And the modders ain't happy. Don't get me wrong, they've managed to tweak their mods in very little time so they work again, but they're still unhappy and they've decided to take it a step further. Since then, R*'s servers have been the target of DDoS attacks on an on-and-off basis. R*'s own service status page doesn't show it (most of the time I check), but [this page](https://downdetector.co.uk/status/gta5/) shows reported outages and shows definite spikes. I've experienced these outages myself...the game launches, but you can only go into story mode (which is completely offline); the whole online side of it is unavailable as it fails to log you in. The game's now over a decade old, yet still generates over half a billion dollars a year for them (according to multiple sources). If these outages annoy enough players, this is bound to start affecting them financially sooner or later. I'm really curious at this point to see who's gonna blink first.
It's bizarre to me. Amongst all that you mention the stupid BattleEye thing pretty much killed all Linux and Steamdeck play overnight. That probably wasn't a huge percentage but it wasn't nothing or I wouldn't have heard about it. They probably flushed quite a bit of yearly revenue just doing that, none of those folks will spend anymore. OTOH, these games tend to be overrun with hackers and cheaters shortly after release. Only now a decade later it has become a problem? But R* is crazy anyway. I spent an hour with some younger modders looking at some things for them. Was blown away by the whole json-everywhere. Didn't expect to even see it because it'd be terrible in context. Driving screws with a hammer. Oh, it was though. It was. In fact it was even worse because they messed it up. Fixing it after GTA had been out for like 5 years cut their load times by like 70%.
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It's bizarre to me. Amongst all that you mention the stupid BattleEye thing pretty much killed all Linux and Steamdeck play overnight. That probably wasn't a huge percentage but it wasn't nothing or I wouldn't have heard about it. They probably flushed quite a bit of yearly revenue just doing that, none of those folks will spend anymore. OTOH, these games tend to be overrun with hackers and cheaters shortly after release. Only now a decade later it has become a problem? But R* is crazy anyway. I spent an hour with some younger modders looking at some things for them. Was blown away by the whole json-everywhere. Didn't expect to even see it because it'd be terrible in context. Driving screws with a hammer. Oh, it was though. It was. In fact it was even worse because they messed it up. Fixing it after GTA had been out for like 5 years cut their load times by like 70%.
And now I've somehow managed to be part of this new ban wave. Got an email claiming I've somehow violated their TOS/EULA, I've been banned from online player mode for 30 days (that, I can live with), and they reset my character profile (that - not so much). They made themselves judge, jury and executioner with that one. No explanation given, and the email says their decision is final with no chance of any sort of appeal. I'd like to at least know what it is they think I did. The people I play with regularly can all vouch for me - I'm the *last* person playing GTAO that would try to cheat, use mods or take advantage of any type of loophole. I've literally got thousands of hours invested in this game, and if I could just use a mod, say, to change my RP score or the amount of money I have...that would completely negate the time I've put into this game. Why bother? It would mean I've been wasting my time all along, if I could just type in a value in a field. There *have* been times where I was in a public session and a modder "money-dropped" on all players. I never asked for that, and every time it happened, I got *pissed* and quit the session as quickly as I could. Then I'd try to "burn" through any amount of money that was illegitimately added to my account. If their system has "proper" accounting built into it - in the sense that they could track where the money or reputation points come from - it's *all* legitimate, down to the last penny, except for, like I said, those instances where a-holes just sent money to everyone in a session. And then they expect to be thanked for it, believing they're doing other others a favor. I *did* send a protest email to their support, and I did find a support phone number. If I don't get a response, I'll follow up with an actual call, and if they don't undo my character reset - I'm done with that game. No way, I'm not starting over. R* has found a way to cure me from my GTA addiction. Maybe I should be sending them a thank you note instead.
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I know some of you are avid GTAO players (Grand Theft Auto Online). Last week Rockstar (aka R*, makers of the GTA series) pushed out a patch that included the much-maligned BattlEye software, which (in short) is intended to prevent cheating and third-party mods. They're probably better at it than R* ever was. For years, R* has pushed out updates that try to mitigate said cheating and modding; it's been mostly a futile cat and mouse game. And it's only now that they've decided to start relying on a third-party to take care of that for them. And the modders ain't happy. Don't get me wrong, they've managed to tweak their mods in very little time so they work again, but they're still unhappy and they've decided to take it a step further. Since then, R*'s servers have been the target of DDoS attacks on an on-and-off basis. R*'s own service status page doesn't show it (most of the time I check), but [this page](https://downdetector.co.uk/status/gta5/) shows reported outages and shows definite spikes. I've experienced these outages myself...the game launches, but you can only go into story mode (which is completely offline); the whole online side of it is unavailable as it fails to log you in. The game's now over a decade old, yet still generates over half a billion dollars a year for them (according to multiple sources). If these outages annoy enough players, this is bound to start affecting them financially sooner or later. I'm really curious at this point to see who's gonna blink first.
Does this mean that I can't use the cheat codes to materialize a military tank out of thin air? Is there still a cheat code to turn off gravity? If you activate both of those cheat codes, you can get inside the tank, and fire the cannon repeatedly. The recoil of the tank's cannon causes the tank to gain enough speed to take off into the air like an aircraft. Most of my time playing GTA consisted of playing it as a flight simulator. I still don't know how to play the game, but I enjoyed being a tank pilot. :)
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Does this mean that I can't use the cheat codes to materialize a military tank out of thin air? Is there still a cheat code to turn off gravity? If you activate both of those cheat codes, you can get inside the tank, and fire the cannon repeatedly. The recoil of the tank's cannon causes the tank to gain enough speed to take off into the air like an aircraft. Most of my time playing GTA consisted of playing it as a flight simulator. I still don't know how to play the game, but I enjoyed being a tank pilot. :)
Are those cheat codes built in the game, or do you have to use mods to access and changes these values? If it's using a third-party, it's a big no-no. If it's built-in...then you may be okay in offline mode, but online...even though it's built-in, that would be against their "modifying gameplay" policy.
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And now I've somehow managed to be part of this new ban wave. Got an email claiming I've somehow violated their TOS/EULA, I've been banned from online player mode for 30 days (that, I can live with), and they reset my character profile (that - not so much). They made themselves judge, jury and executioner with that one. No explanation given, and the email says their decision is final with no chance of any sort of appeal. I'd like to at least know what it is they think I did. The people I play with regularly can all vouch for me - I'm the *last* person playing GTAO that would try to cheat, use mods or take advantage of any type of loophole. I've literally got thousands of hours invested in this game, and if I could just use a mod, say, to change my RP score or the amount of money I have...that would completely negate the time I've put into this game. Why bother? It would mean I've been wasting my time all along, if I could just type in a value in a field. There *have* been times where I was in a public session and a modder "money-dropped" on all players. I never asked for that, and every time it happened, I got *pissed* and quit the session as quickly as I could. Then I'd try to "burn" through any amount of money that was illegitimately added to my account. If their system has "proper" accounting built into it - in the sense that they could track where the money or reputation points come from - it's *all* legitimate, down to the last penny, except for, like I said, those instances where a-holes just sent money to everyone in a session. And then they expect to be thanked for it, believing they're doing other others a favor. I *did* send a protest email to their support, and I did find a support phone number. If I don't get a response, I'll follow up with an actual call, and if they don't undo my character reset - I'm done with that game. No way, I'm not starting over. R* has found a way to cure me from my GTA addiction. Maybe I should be sending them a thank you note instead.
I'm curious if you've spent much money. I've wondered if there exists a slice of demographic between whale and cheapskate that some of these companies 'accidentally' hit the reset button on. They found that 1/2 of them will spend more again even rebuying stuff they already had so 'whoopsies' happen. I'm not sure it's more than turning a blind eye to it. The whole addition of BattleEye at this point anyway seems more driven by that sort of financial motivation than anything else. It's the same result there with cheaters getting accounts banned but buying new ones. You're just collateral damage maybe.
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I'm curious if you've spent much money. I've wondered if there exists a slice of demographic between whale and cheapskate that some of these companies 'accidentally' hit the reset button on. They found that 1/2 of them will spend more again even rebuying stuff they already had so 'whoopsies' happen. I'm not sure it's more than turning a blind eye to it. The whole addition of BattleEye at this point anyway seems more driven by that sort of financial motivation than anything else. It's the same result there with cheaters getting accounts banned but buying new ones. You're just collateral damage maybe.
If their criteria is some arbitrary amount of money, then that's downright idiotic. As I alluded to in my previous post, if their software can properly track where all the money is coming from, what I have should all be accounted for, except for what amounts to a rounding error that represents what money-drop cheaters have given me (which has never been something I've requested or could do anything about). I've had this one character profile since 2017 or so. Never restarted. And I don't play any other game, except for RDR2 that I went through rather quickly last summer (2023). So the hours add up, and unlike many players, I don't waste time in the game doing things that don't have a payoff.
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If their criteria is some arbitrary amount of money, then that's downright idiotic. As I alluded to in my previous post, if their software can properly track where all the money is coming from, what I have should all be accounted for, except for what amounts to a rounding error that represents what money-drop cheaters have given me (which has never been something I've requested or could do anything about). I've had this one character profile since 2017 or so. Never restarted. And I don't play any other game, except for RDR2 that I went through rather quickly last summer (2023). So the hours add up, and unlike many players, I don't waste time in the game doing things that don't have a payoff.
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That's wild. I played when it first came out and I really liked the prison break and other team heists. Probably never even hit 100 hours in it though. RDR2 was really really pretty.
jochance wrote:
That's wild. I played when it first came out and I really liked the prison break and other team heists.
There's so much more that came out since those heists. :-)
jochance wrote:
Probably never even hit 100 hours in it though.
I don't have an exact number, but it's in the thousands. That's with an S, as in, plural...
jochance wrote:
RDR2 was really really pretty.
It still is to this day. Even on my decade old video card. I fully intend to replay it one day, with a better GPU.