Rockstar hits GTA Online cheaters in the virtual pocket by emptying their in-game bank accounts

midian182

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Ever since it first launched, GTA Online has had a problem with people using various hacks and mods to build up huge sums of money, and Rockstar's had enough. The company has started resetting the bank accounts of players with “illegitimately gained in-game money," which in some cases amounts to trillions of virtual dollars.

A number of cheaters were distraught to find that Rockstar had sent them the following message: "We have determined that your account illegitimately gained in-game money via mods, cheats, or other actions. We've adjusted your account and updated your balance." One person tweeted that almost $118 trillion dollars had been removed from his account.

Even players that avoided using hacks and mods to increase their money have been affected. People who exploited in-game glitches to generate cash also found their balances were showing zero.

It’s been reported that cheater accounts containing smaller amounts of cash seem less likely to be targeted by Rockstar, though this could change as time goes on.

In addition to removing the ill-gotten gains, Rockstar has updated GTA Online’s banning and suspension policy. Now, whenever a player is temporarily banned from the game, their characters, progress, property, and inventory will be reset.

Additionally, the company has revised its “three strikes” rule for repeat offenders. Anyone who receives just two suspensions from the game will now be permanently banned.

While Rockstar’s actions are unlikely to see an end to all forms of cheating in GTA Online, their severity should make people think twice about taking the quick and easy path.

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I finally played GTA Online. It was fun but by the time I figure it all out I will have died a thousand deaths
 
Awesome! This is the best news all day, and I might want to play the game again because of it.
 
They'll just cheat more money. And as you can get innocent people banned with hacks them saying "Now, whenever a player is temporarily banned from the game, their characters, progress, property, and inventory will be reset." doesn't sound that good of a practice. If it wasn't broken beyond repair this would be nice but to get rid of hackers and cheaters they probably need to write the whole network code all over and they already got paid. Maybe next time the online will actually work but knowing rockstar they will just probably focus on more microtrans and use the same cheater friendly code in red dead 2.

If they can identify hacking and make sure the "hacker" isn't victim of other hacker they should just permaban them on first offence. Dedicated hackers/cheaters will buy the game again so you would actually make money this way instead of getting paying customers stop playing due to unplayable hacker/cheater servers.
 
Rockstar being greedy Rockstar (I don't blame them, Id do the same) ****ed up the servers. I wish the servers were able to be deployed by a 3rd party just like you have for Battlefield games. If we could host our own we could have choices for RP/PVP/Custom game modes and so forth. Ability to have more than 28 players or what ever it is per map as well...

WTB SAMP + GTA V = win
 
Gotta keep up that tedious grind so players will be more tempted to shell out for shark cards. What if someone ended up having fun WITHOUT paying unreasonable amounts for monopoly money.
 
Alright, now that I'm done playing it. I bought everything I could, are they going to take all that back too? Taking the money back at this point really doesnt effect me that much. I picked up illegitimate money that a hacker was shooting from a mini gun. I picked it up legitimately, how would they know otherwise?! lol I havent logged in for quite some time now, so I have no idea if they reset my bank account.
 
I'm surprised they're bothering to do a major wipe and bother announcing it this late. I wonder if I'll be affected. Back when it launched on PC, there was that reported breach and I happened to be affected. So when I came back a month later, everything on my profile was changed except for email/password (of course to not alert me via email). The person obviously used cheats/mods to get millions in currency and very high up in rank. Asked R* to revert it all, but all they reverted was the rank, not the cash, even though I asked a second time. So now a year+ later, I have everything in the game I want and have no money anyways lol

Yeah, I played it a couple of time but there were too many campers that would blow you up when you regenerated. What a shame Rockstar doesn't do something about THAT!
Freemode honestly has always sucked imo in GTAV. The fun is in the heists, races, and coop/adversary missions. Unless you're a CEO/VIP in freemode, then you don't get much money either.

Alright, now that I'm done playing it. I bought everything I could, are they going to take all that back too? Taking the money back at this point really doesnt effect me that much. I picked up illegitimate money that a hacker was shooting from a mini gun. I picked it up legitimately, how would they know otherwise?! lol I havent logged in for quite some time now, so I have no idea if they reset my bank account.
Another article, I think from TechPowerUp, had some more specific info. Questions remained about whether people, such as you, who didn't carry out any cheating/modding are to be affected. I don't remember it exactly though.
 
Im so glad I pirated this game after buying it on PS3........without online its a great game.......
 
Developers need to wake up and realize that policies that have warnings for cheating don't WORK. People will cheat and RUIN legit players experience until they get caught because who cares? They will just be given a warning or temp ban and will have a second or third chance.

They need to ban cheaters on first offense. Put a warning up. If your caught cheating, you're permanently banned!
 
I played online once in February 2016 to see the character creator. Never played online since, keep getting errors that my login has failed due to too many failed logins, recently got someone else's login details in my Social Club login box (which can only come from one place) and then got one of these messages when I reported the security breach to Rockstar... and then they closed the support ticket for the account breach to stop me replying to it. I had $9060, no vehicles, no property and one achievement for completing the introduction... and was Rank 1... hardly the earnings of someone cheating online... and that was before I got this message... so go figure that one out.

It seems that not only are they using this tactic on people who cheat but also using it on people who complain about security breaches. I wouldn't trust Rockstar and online activities as far as I could throw their office block.

If I thought cheating would get me banned from online and leave me to play offline in peace, I'd load up my game with mods and raise hell... but I would rather enjoy the creations of other modders (and of myself), because as a professional developer, games are all about creativity to me, not profits through exploitational rip-off money cards. So I stay offline to make sure nothing ever compromises that... nothing will lure me to play online, in any game, on any platform. No matter how much begging they do with their pre-loading BS Shark Card marketing deals. They can shove them where the sharks don't swim!
 
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