Some of the folks who’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto Online have been using an exploit to generate ridiculous sums of cash from in-game missions. Many say that it’s ruined the multiplayer portion of the best-selling title. Now, Rockstar says that, as part of the maintenance period announced yesterday, it will be sucking that ill-gotten money out of the GTA Online economy and punishing players guilty of breaking the rules.
The money hacking in virtual Los Santos has caused an epidemic of weaponised gifting, where players were essentially assaulting each other with giant gobs of unasked-for money. According to what affected players have said, having eleventy billion dollars in your GTA bank account isn’t quite the magical happening it may seem like, since that cash can seen as a flag for GTA Online moderators looking for cheaters to ban. Rockstar’s comments today make it seem like reprisals are about to start coming down:
We will continue to issue title updates on an ongoing basis to counter the negative impact this has had on gameplay, and as part of today’s maintenance period, we are removing the counterfeit GTA$ from the game’s economy. Anyone who innocently received GTA$ as a result of these exploits but did not engage in cheating to acquire it will not face any further action – the funds will just be removed, and you’ll be able to keep any items you currently own.
Those who actively engaged in cheating and exploiting the game in this manner will, however, be subject to in-game penalties at our discretion. This may include being placed in isolated cheater pools or banned from GTA Online altogether.
Innocents victims are likely happy to hear about incoming fixes and that they’ll be able to keep their in-game property. Situations like this tend to become a cat-and-mouse chase between those who want to cheat and the people trying to shut them down. Mass exploitations generally don’t get solved all at once so don’t expect that GTA V‘s online portion will all of a sudden be populated only by rules-abiding players.
Comments
28 responses to “Rockstar Says It’s Shutting Down GTA Online Cheaters”
Its stuffed.
How are Rockstar gonna fix the game, let alone get the players back onto GTA Online.
My issue with this is, why ban people when Rockstar stuffed up.
Rockstar new online was messed up the second it all started, they made little effort to fix it or stop it from effecting the whole economy.
Now its impossible to get everyone.
Then their was an Infinite RP glitch and now everyone is max level. Rock* are gonna have to wipe levels to get it back to even.
Rockstar should take the blame. They released the game in an unfinished state. Then after a week, everyone got bored cause of no Online Activities.
No wonder why the game went downhill, it was simply rushed.
Then Rockstar thinks they fixed the glitch, but they havent, and just created more problems. Rockstar left the games online portion alone and let everyone deal with the Glitch exploiters for months. Rockstar should have shut down the servers untill fix was found.
GTA 5 has blown my interest in any future Rockstar Title. They have turned into the average developer.
Rockstar games have great Enviroments but Gameplay is tedious.
Since GTA 4 I stop play GTA game before I finished the main story simply because the games offer very little.
I finished the GTA 5 storie but couldnt get back into continuing the game.
Ha, this’ll be interesting. Pretty much all my friends I play this with have at least $1bil. Wht’s gonna happen, we’ll be left with $0?
Also, it didn’t ruin the game at all – it made it a ton better in fact. No longer are we weighed down by lying R*’s stupidly low payouts.
totally agree with you about not ruining the game, those payouts were ridiculously low, then they started reducing them more. It was nearly insulting, oh you managed to get a bunch of people together to play through a mission that takes 20 minutes to complete, well done, here’s a couple bucks, now you only need to do that another 800 times to buy yourself a bicycle.
Interesting. Meanwhile me and my mates played the game as intended and still made good money without cheating or exploiting.
As for lying, R* never lied. They told us GTAO was supposed to be like an MMO with the ability to pay for GT$, this was never hidden. They also told us about all the nerfs to payouts to balance the game.
The exploiting didn’t make the game better at all, it destroyed any progression and made the high class items useless considering every lvl 20 and his dog was driving around in Adders. I didn’t even buy the Adder in the end because it no longer had any value as a end game item.
I will say however that the balance went too far the wrong way, and yes, it did become hard to make money if you sat doing one race over and over.
– I too played the game as intended, and I got $120K for a house together in about 20hrs of gameplay, which included a decent chunk of grinding. I also used bullets sparingly and lived like I was on poverty. People don’t have time to spend 50hrs to get a house and a car, plus there’s simply not enough jobs for it to not get boring and grindey.
– R* did lie – they said getting cash Online would be heaps easier than in single-player. So far, every single good-paying job has been nerfed apart from one, which is nerfed simply due to the poor game loading mechanics. 🙁 Additionally, where’s the stock market?
– I have 2.6 billion dollars and I still need to grind to get levels to unlock items. Just because you have money doesn’t mean you can buy your way up the ranks. I’m only level 60 or so, and I have a long way to go until I can purchase a minigun. All the money did was increase my fun factor due to not caring about: cars, ammo, ridiculous purchases.
– Sorry, but you sound like a hipster when you say the Adder has no value because everyone has one. 😛 The value of the high-end cars is mostly to decrease your travel time, as a 5mi destination would take forever in a stock banger! (Also only n00bs think Adder is the best, it’s actually the XF! :D)
These are my counter-points, but I understand where you’re getting from. You feel robbed because you spent precious hours getting things the legit way. While I applaud your effort and you should be proud, don’t frown on others who are having significantly more fun that we ever could have. 🙂
I would have to agree that the game was lacking on jobs, but you also would know that the majority of people didn’t even try. It also didn’t help that a lot of features didn’t work properly because of what I called, faux ownership. (Basically one player triggered high value cars, armoured cars and supply drops, but if that player left for a mission, it bugged the event.
I don’t ever recall them saying making money would be easier, even in the news pre release. The stock market I agree with, but given the billions exploiters have, the market would be destroyed in half a day. (remembering that the more stocks you have the more you skew the value, so if bob brought 12 billion in stocks it would completely devalue everything.) And anyway, it is easy to make money, it just doesn’t seem so with everything so expensive lol
I am torn on the money making things more fun, earning something through smart play appeals to me more than completely bypassing money. The minigun for me became useless as players slowly lost fear of it. It was great early on getting one from yellow supply drops, as soon as it started squealing people would run, but now they know that the auto aim gives them a much better advantage if you play smart. (Rpg is still awesome though)
Dude I was a hipster before it was even cool!!! But seriously, I maintain that the appeal of the Adder or XF was lost on me when I saw all the noobs in them. And I also collect cars I like, not what’s faster. I use the Vacca for a super car and my bike is the slowest damn thing in the game, but man does it look like a sweet WW2 Harley. (I completed all races for parts early, thankfully before every race was filled with Adders/XF and no catch up) As for speed for travelling, the map is not exactly huge so it never bothered me.
I don’t feel robbed personally, I just feel that a number of mistakes destroyed what the game was and could have been. Remember the beach bum pack was due not long after release but got pushed back from the sheer issues.
It should have gone though an open beta with additional content added though the stages. I do blame R* for many of the problems as some things seemed to be so obviously exploitable, but the rest is just the teething problems most online games have. (And no offence to R*, but they are masters of single player, never really broken ground in online gaming.)
Look I am glad they are FINALLY doing something about the many who sucked the fun away for others, but for me it’s too little too late.
(I think they gave up on the console version making them the money it was supposed to and now its just a testing ground for the upcoming PC release.)
Heh, that last point I agree with totally. +next-gen
Fair enough if they hacked or something, but if they’re exploiting a glitch that’s a little harsh, even if it’s a glitch your still operating within the parameters of the product you were sold. Also I was gifted a tonne of money from my friends (that I assume they got from exploits) does that mean I’ll be banned because I have a large sum of money in my account even though I didn’t use the exploits? The only reason they even care is because now no one will pay real money for their in game currency.
They said they’re only taking action against the actual hackers, if you didn’t do anything then you’re grand but probably poorer
A lot of players will have crap load of money because a hacked player came into their session and did their business (with the money hack)…I’ve played where characters have all their weapons but their RP’s are at 1-3 (it’s more neg 1- neg 3 because thay have hacked pass level 999), people playing on god mode,
I don’t think all players will go back to $0….if that is the case people who grinded for their money and who paid for in-game cash will really jump and down and complain. If I lose all my cash (or go back to a pre-detimirined outcome I’ll survive…If Rockstar really wanted to swing the hammer then players who purchased apartments and vechiles could dissapear as well (oh imagine the backlash).
Rockstar to me (and a lot of players will agree) needs` to do the following
– Introduce Heists (since they are removing the counterfeit in-game cash…it would be the best time to do it)
– increase payouts on missions
– reduce prices on some items (I mean 25k for a Crew logo on your car or 10k (I think) for a logo on your shirt)
– small increase of RP – this to help new players get up to speed
– re-introduce some of the cars that were removed previously due to exploits
– abality to purchase garages without losing your property (or given the option) – yeah I know a 10 car garage is massive but I would like to own more cars.
Reduce tanks to only being used once every 24 hours. Seriously, the game has become a trollfest since most people are reaching that point now. I don’t use my tank except to take out those who use theirs, then I get out and blow up mine because quite frankly, the tank takes most of the fun out of it now.
Owning multiple properties would be awesome, plus some actual POINT to an apartment would be great… I know there’s a planning room but still…
I didn’t even bother with the tank. (Though tried a mates and can see how people can go a bit nuts on them)
It used to bring me great joy to shoot tank drivers with a sniper rifle and hear them rage, call me a cheater and refuse to accept that their invincible death machine had a huge unavoidable weakness.
But all these changes are too little too late for me. As someone who played legit we were too restricted while the exploiters and hackers drove the game in to the ground.
I said it before and will again, they should have done an open Beta with stages that introduced more content as it went. That way all these problems could have been dealt with before the online became the mess it is (or was)
Absolutely. An open beta would’ve exposed the overpowered nature of the tank. (Maybe even allow people to use the tank but put the tank itself on a timer? i.e. it runs out of fuel after a while and then just sits stationary.)
I wouldn’t reduce tank spawn ability. That’s part of the fun and chaos of GTA! Also rookie mistake – everyone assumes you have to be in the city and try to kill whoever killed you! Instead, realise you’re out-gunned and go for a drive into the country; or start a job; or change servers. No one is forcing you to endure torture.
“Rookie mistake”, Im level 120 and got there legitimately with this character, there’s nothing rookie about me. I explore the country side intensively. There’s nothing to say though that you have to put up with the OP situation with tanks ruining it for beginners at the moment. Passive mode for beginners is broken too, I can roll right over them and crush them to death, I can blow them up in cars etc. “No one is forcing you to endure the torture” and comments of the like are just a cop out statement used to shrug off any responsibility of acting like a douche on a server.
Yeah, it is a cop out statement I agree. But, such is life, and I’m convinced I have to accept such cop out statements.
On another note, lvl120 nice! How many hours have you got? I’m lvl 60 with 30+hrs I think. I’m not calling you a liar, but I find it extremely hard to believe you can be lvl120 unless you have literally 80+ hours and you spend pretty much every day online. Because I did a fair amount of grinding of Coveted too …
Oh god how many hours…. possibly over 120 – 150 hours??? At least? Possibly more? My mate and I have a gang, The Super Mario Gangstas, we would put in around 4 – 5 hours a night from 9 – 2 in the morning, when he got home from work. Then there were weekends where we’d play. When the game first came out, we grinded and grinded and grinded missions. I had a character I used an exploit to get to 140 with, it took me literally 1 day, that sucked, it had no feeling of achievement. Coveted is a great mission, I’ve done that one hundreds of times literally. We spent one saturday grinding that for around eight hours, to the point where we streamlined it to shooting just the first guy at the car, then the guys on the right of the hill, getting the chopper when it landed, capping the pilot and the guys on the point and not worrying about anyone else (chopper was smoking by the time you get to the drop off but it still makes it and cuts the time it takes by roughly 50 – 60%).
Ah okay, that’s a ton of hours then! We’ve got Coveted down pretty well too. I’m usually the guy in chopper while the rest suppress the guys on other side of cove.
Yeah, too many hours lol. We’ve sort of stopped playing now, because we’re bored of it. Until heists hit that is, or major content upgrades that is. The removal of ill gotten cash doesn’t worry me, I had close to 8 billion recently, I wont miss a cent of it, I didnt ask for it, it was just continually gifted and I came to hate it. It removed the need to do missions. Now, I have a reason to do missions again at least.
I grinded Coveted until I could afford a helicopter.
You PS3 or 360? I’ll probably need some help when the heists come out
360. Metalsmurfsolid.
so a way to put it is there are bad consequences to cheaters, but when u ask me the are loads of people that hack half the people that play gta5 online hack, so there gonna lose ratings. but what i want to know from this website is are they patching anything?????????
I just wish there was an easier way to unlock car parts at LS Customs. You have to win races with each class of car (a lot of races) to get more unlocks. I find that almost every race that’s populated, has customized vehicles turned on, so there are people with un-beatable, maxed out cars. When I have a car that is almost stock standard. If there was only another way I could open up all the unlocks.
A dodgy player can give me eleventy-billion GTA$, great. But those car parts are still locked 🙁
The ‘win races’ one is easy. I made a custom race with Content Creator that was of minimum length, got a friend, and grinded it for an hour. Somehow it glitched and I now own turbo unlock for every class. :\
You can do the above with Turbo Starts and ‘win with custom’ requirements too. It doesn’t really take long.
Yep that’s indeed the best way.
Well, I may just have to grab some of you as PSN friends. Most of my mates play PC, and not consoles. So when I jump online in Australia, I’m mainly playing with randoms….
It’s kind of ironic that in a game concerned mainly with acquiring money through illegal activities the developer is cracking down on such behaviour in the real world
It has to be fairly unfair or its just no fair!
Everyone needs to come to SA-MP, it’s better than ever now and poops all over GTAO
Well I have just logged back into GTA Online – still have my apartment and cars…money has been reduced from 900 million to 50k which I don’t mind
What good is $1B if it takes me 60 hours to unlock the minigun? GTA is about freedom and fun and chaos. I dont have enough spare time to invest all of it in grinding. I had about $20k before the stimulus package and never even thought twice about money, now with the package i have plenty, because i have nothing to spend it on!! Is it so much to ask that within the first 2 hours of playing, I want to jump out of a lear jet my friend is piloting, fire off as many rockets as i can carry into a busy intersection and then parachute onto a tank and go hunt deer with it? Somehow they have made GTA boring.
While there at it it would be good if they fixed the Red Dead Redemption servers. Currently they are so foobar you can reach level 50 (max) in 10 minutes, get 1000 kills in 30 seconds, go invisible to every other player & lose your horse. That is, assuming your were patient enough to wait the 20-30 minutes it might take to connect to a server 🙁
For example;