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.
That’s disgusting! Where do those criminals gather, so I could go an express my utter disappointment to them directly?
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.
Ethical cheating? Nice. I can get behind that.
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 clowdstrike 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.
This is actually really effective as a form of protest. From a business perspective, Rockstar probably won’t roll anticheat back, but future companies will assess it as part of the risk when looking to add AC
At least you can turn it off in singleplayer and still use your mods there. That’s a pretty important consideration imho.
How do those community servers for RP work? Do they require mods? Do they still work?
Couldn’t we avoid all this by giving players the option to host and moderate their own servers?
Tons of the problems of modern day matchmaking could be solved by this, but if players are running their own servers then they can just have their server give them the items they want, which means no more premium currency purchases for R$.
Ownership of purchased goods?
Are you crazy???
That would lose a ton of profits!
Things like FiveM exist, which is exactly that. I’m not sure if that is at all affected by the anticheat though, I didn’t read the article.
Rockstar has apparently bought FiveM.
I sure hope not cause GTA Online is trash if you want to do anything other than Free Mode. I got so sick and tired of all the loading screens, disconnects, and empty lobbies.
Even when they apparently “fixed” the loading issue, all it did was speed up the connection to Free Mode. Hosting/joining a mission still takes ages and nobody ever joins any of my games anymore so I gave up and went to FiveM full-time. If that gets shut down by anti-cheat then I’m going back to GTA IV. Cops N’ Crooks is more fun than anything GTA Online has to offer, anyway.
I’ve heard rockstar recruited fivem developers
And owns everything now
I really hope they don’t find a way to blame the linux community for this. Even if we hate kernel level anti cheat, I think most of us were happy with the refund from Valve lol
Since when TF did everyone decide cheating is fine and anti cheat is bad?!?
No one decided cheating in multiplayer games is fine. But invasive anti-cheat software is significantly worse, and frankly doesn’t actually work. Automated detection tools can help, but ultimately you need mods / admins to properly stay on top of cheating. Trying to replace those jobs with incredibly invasive software installed on every user’s device is just a sign of a trash developer or publisher.
Nobody likes cheating.
However, a lot of people don’t like anti-cheat mechanisms that are essentially rootkits, and especially nobody likes when a product is changed long after it’s release in a way that makes it unusable (as the new anti-cheat forbids Linux).
Since they shut out Linux players last week. Taking away access to things someone bought, used and can’t use anymore because of something the supplier did could be interpreted as theft.
Good.
As it should be. Rockstar Games deserves nothing less.
Rockstar makes such weird choices considering how passionate their fans are.
Which ultimately makes being a passionate Rockstar fan a weirder and weirder choice.
Don’t buy games with invasive user-side anti-cheats that hamper performance, and demand refunds on any game that adds it after purchase.
I don’t understand why this is so hard for people. If everyone gave a shit, we could end this. But instead, people would rather just complain while still forking over the money to these companies.
There are so many good indie games without this kind of bullshit. We have better choices.
It didn’t have “invasive user side anti-cheat” on day one you doughnut
That’s why Linux users bought it. This was added YEARS after release
Is “get rid of all anti-cheat” a popular position outside of Lemmy? I don’t really play these sorts of games but was under the impression that most competitive multiplayer would be unplayable without anti-cheat measures.
It is perfectly possible to run anti-cheat that are roughly as good (or as bad, as it often turns out) without full admin privilege and running as kernel-level drivers. Coupled with server-side validation, which seems to be a dying breed, you’d also weed out a ton of cheaters while missing the most motivated of them.
As someone who lurks around in different communities (to some extent; Steam forums, reddit, lemmy, mastodon, and a few game-centered discord servers), the issue is not much against anti-cheat for online play. It’s the nature of these piece of software that is the issue. It would not be the same if the anti-cheat was also forced on solo gameplay, but it is not the case here.
(bonus points for systems that allow playing on non-protected servers, but that’s asking a bit too much from some publishers I suppose)
Anti-cheat measures should be baked into the server side. 99 percent of the multiplayer cheating problem is not adhering to the golden rule of server security: Never Trust the Client
There are plenty of anti-cheat measure that doesn’t require invasive access to your system or performance hits. The objection is not to fighting cheating, it is with the specific overreaching methodology chosen to do so.
Also I personally rarely play multiplayer so it’s even more frustrating to have bullshit installed on my system for a feature that doesn’t even apply to me.
They implemented this 10 years after the game’s release. It’s harder to vote with your wallet at that point.
Probably testing it for gta6.
And that’s the one we can refuse to buy.
But let’s be honest - people won’t. They’ll buy it in record numbers - just not on Linux.
and demand refunds on any game that adds it after purchase.
The way I see it, adding it, even this late, is changing the terms of the agreement and thus justification for a refund. Steam will often see it that way too if you word it as such. And if not, hell, you can still badger the publisher for a refund incessantly so at least it still costs them the equivalent in man hours even if you don’t get the refund. The point is not to be passive, even if we don’t get to win every single battle.
Companies like Rockstar certainly would meet any requests for refunds outside of very recently purchased with “Go kick rocks.”. For sure they changed the rules/ experience after the fact, but you can bet it’s covered in the small print of the EULA. Even if they received (and denied) 100,000 requests, they would care a bit unless they saw a significant slump in their overall sales. Sadly, a lot of their customers will be pissed about this but will be first in line buying other Rockstar games.
Depends on your country/jurisdiction. Consumer protection is weak in the USA, but much stronger in some other countries. It’d depend on how much it changes the experience. For example, if you buy a product because it advertises a particular feature, but then the manufacturer removes the feature in the future, that can be a reason to get a refund, at least in Australia and some European countries.
EULAs are not legally binding documents that allow one to sign away their rights.
What rights?
You’re buying a license to play a game. Rockstar is not obligated to ensure it’s available to you indefinitely.
“What!? You don’t like the erosion of ownership rights? You’re an asshole!” - you.
Sadly, a lot of their customers will be pissed about this but will be first in line buying other Rockstar games.
Then they aren’t pissed enough. But yes, talking the talk is completely meaningless if you don’t also walk the walk, I agree.
Companies like Rockstar certainly would meet any requests for refunds outside of very recently purchased with “Go kick rocks.”
If you let them, sure. The reason we use phrases like “fight for a refund” is because these things are hard and they take effort. Like yes it sucks to have to do that and yes I understand our time is valuable, but as I see it there is value in both having your voice heard and punitively costing an offending company manhours in having to deal with you - even if you ultimately do not win the fight.
Again, the point isn’t about winning or getting your money back, it’s about not being passive and just accepting the things that happen to you as if you do not have autonomy.
I won’t be buying other Rockstar games if they do this with other Rockstar games, since it means I won’t be able to play them since I use Linux and they don’t want to use the checkmark to enable BattlEye on Linux/Proton.
Right, I bought that shit in 2014 I think. Haven’t played it in several years.
Sounds like it’s working
I’ll just play it on Xbox 360…or PS3…or PS4…or Xbox one…or PS5…or Xbox S/X…or Windows…wait is this Skyrim or GTA?
Can’t release a sequel or single player update in a decade - can impose cheat engines. Something about a surprised pikachu when they get flak
Stop making every fucking game and open world mmo wanna be. Bring back single player with couch co op or make private lobby setups so we don’t have to fuck with every douche who wants to make everyone else’s life as sad as their own. I’m a big GYA fan but have refused to buy for this specific reason. Have almost given in repeatedly but just go watch some YouTube’s on it and it reminds me not to contribute to this shit every time.
I wish more games came with couch co-op. It was a lot of fun in Halo and Diablo.
Around the time gta 5 came out, i lived with two guys and had 3 neighbours and we would often play video games together, but we never really found a game that we all liked. Gtao was just around the corner and the trailers looked so fun. People doing silly shit, skydiving together, play some golf, race around the city. When it actually came out and worked, oh boy. Leave the house, get shot, drive around, get shot, try to do something with friends, get blown up by a fighter jet. The answer is always: it’s GTA, of course you get shot, play mario part, or shot like that. Yeah, i get that, but i always felt like it’s just people who enjoy to make other people’s experience worse, and it’s not about pvp. Gta draws such a weird crowd.
Every online game is like that now. I avoid all of them for that reason. It doesn’t matter the game, if it starts to get popular the massive group of trolls shows up and goes out of there way to figure out the methodology to ruin the gameplay for others.
It sucks because there have been a few fun games that a lot of people won’t touch due to the online nature of garbage humans. Helldivers 2, SM2, and Deep Rock Galactic (sorry, your community is also filled with shitters) are all ruined because in order to really advance in the game you HAVE to play with others. It’s piss poor game design.
I played WoW right when it came out, on a PvP server.
There was already a subset of the crowd just like there back then - some people rushed game progression to have higher levels as soon as possible only to then hang out in beginner areas and “pwn” significantly lower level players.
That’s around the time when the term “griefer” was coined.
In these things the real difference is how the servers are structured rather than the human beings: if the architecture is designed so that there is some way to filter players (smaller servers with moderation or some kind of kick voting system that bans repeat offenders), griefers end up in their own griefer instances griefing each other and the rest can actually play the game, otherwise you get a deeply beginner (or people with less time, such as working adults) unfriendly environment.
As somebody else pointed out environments were people run their own servers tend create those conditions at least for some cases (basically if there’s some kind of moderation) whilst massive world centralized server environments tend to give free right to people whose pleasure in a multiplayer games derives mostly from making it unpleasent for others (in game-making, griefing is actually recognized as one of the 4 core types of enjoyment - along with achiving, exploring and socializing - people can derived from multiplayer games)
Couch co-op gta san andreas was the best, so sad it’s not more common in present games.
If a game offers multiplayer, they should also offer a dedicated server that people can setup for themselves.
For MMOs, they can make the servers optionally federated.
This relates closely to the EU Initiative from https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
wait, can you not play GTA single player anymore?
