Rockstar Games’ servers have been under heavy fire from massive DDoS attacks in recent days, causing widespread login and connectivity issues for players of GTA Online. These attacks come in the wake of Rockstar’s recent implementation of BattlEye, a new anti-cheat system designed to crack down on in-game cheating, sparking backlash from a segment of the player base. Protesters, unhappy with the new system, have resorted to using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to disrupt the servers, escalating tensions between the gaming giant and its community.
As someone who is pretty old and is a crap gamer - well firstly I only play single player so I guess it wouldn’t effect me. But what’s the problem with anti cheat? Aside from it being code you don’t want on your machine. I dunno, I don’t get why people cheat. Isn’t it a better feeling when you just play and get good?
Edit - I’m not defending rockstar btw. Don’t know the politics here. In fact last game I enjoyed was vice city on the PS2. I’m trying to hey caught up on everything I missed. But yeah, what’s the problem with anti cheat?
Aside from it being code you don’t want on your machine. I dunno, I don’t get why people cheat. Isn’t it a better feeling when you just play and get good?
I’ve done some cheating on GTAO, so I can speak to this a bit.
For me, the next biggest reason after the one you listed is that their game is grindy as fuck. I want to be able to play with the cool vehicles and toys in the game, but they’re locked behind hours and hours of grinding, even just for a single item. I understand some people like that, but it’s not for me. But it’s also not just grinding that’s the problem. Their loading screens in the game are frequent, slow (1-5 minute of loading each), and are filled with shitty crews that make it impossible to do the missions.
So back when I used to play I had a script that would just give me shit loads of money. I could buy what I wanted, have fun, and move on. Games are for fun, not for feeling like they’re a second job.
What’s worse, is that Rockstar intentionally makes it grindy so you’re motivated to steal your mom’s credit cards and use real world money to buy fake world money that lasts you about 20 minutes. It’s very scummy behavior, and cheating is a way to get around that.
The script kiddies that just like to fuck with other people are a whole other can of worms. Those people can get bent.
I wasn’t expecting the perspective of an online game cheater on this to be so interesting, but that was really very interesting. Thanks for sharing it.
Hmm thanks for the reply. Actually mate I kinda see your point. Like I said, I’m just getting into gaming after maybe a twenty year gap and I’ve not played much online stuff. Yeah I can see it would be frustrating to have all the cool shit behind a grind wall.
I guess when I heard cheating I was thinking of people who gain an unfair advantage and ruin the game for others. That’s the sort of cheating I don’t understand.
Back in the day, there were cheats in computer magazines, a sequence of key presses that would give you loads of lives or money or bullets or whatever. I used those an loved em.
Back in the day, there were cheats in computer magazines, a sequence of key presses that would give you loads of lives or money or bullets or whatever. I used those an loved em.
I still use those for my Nintendo DS. My dad had an extension card for his Sega genesis that did the same.
Cheats like that are as old as games themselves, and they’re not going to be going anywhere any time soon.
It’s just that now we have online versions, and if you’re on PC you can edit any memory address you like, directly, with any value you like.
Aside from it being code you don’t want on your machine
Code you don’t want on your machine, that have sometimes more permissions than you yourself have on your own files, is completely opaque, and have the legitimacy to keep constant outgoing network data that you can’t audit.
Yes, aside for that, no reason at all. No problem with a huge risk on your privacy for moderate results that don’t particularly benefit you in the long run.
(and all that is assuming that they’re not nefarious to begin with, which is almost impossible to prove)
If you play in Linux assuming this game even runs on Linux. Good chance they will ban you from running this game on that OS. They could allow it but most companies see Linux as a minority and will mostly willing to take the hit of blanket banning the whole OS. I guess Steamdecks would be out of question now. Another is security risk this kind of anti cheat tend to be invasive they have access to your kernel, the part of the OS that has access to everything on your system. If that thing is compromised good chance you’ll be affected also if you have that in your system. Think of something like crowdstrike issue.
Rockstar have already mentioned that they are working to get the game working on Steam Deck, and by extension Linux in general.
Shouldn’t be too hard since BattlEye is supposed to be compatible and there’s a BattlEye Proton runtime.
Anticheats can be very invasive, they can theoretically scan all the files inside your computer (whether it is practically done, I don’t know but it surely feels like it’s been done), take screenshots regularly, send your hardware information, etc. So yeah, if you are someone who takes security seriously…
Yeah I get that. I don’t like foreign code on my machine. Trouble is, I dropped the ball with coding over twenty years ago and I kinda feel like the whole of windows is foreign code. I trust Linux more, but I don’t really understand it. I tend to assume that when I’m online my device is sending something I don’t want sent to some fucker I never even heard of. Insert shrug emoji
