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.

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    They’re kinda proving rockstar’s point, I am fairly sure the venn diagram of “protesters” and cheaters is more or less a circle

    • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de
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      2 months ago

      The actual cheaters completely bypassed the new anti-cheat in about 6 hours. They had to update their cheats a bit, but are otherwise essentially unaffected. Linux users, Steam Deck users, and people who don’t want to give a single game full hardware access, are all affected. None of those can play GTA:Online anymore, unless they mod the game to bypass the anti-cheat, which can be seen as cheating in itself, and could result in a ban.

      The ddos attacks are likely being orchestrated by a small group of people or even an individual, it probably does not represent the vast majority of affected users.

    • tabular@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      If you were to treat cheaters as you may treat pirates, a service problem, then the overlap of Linux users and cheaters is a circle of unsatisfied users.

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Cheating is absolutely not the same issue as piracy though, one is people wanting an unearned power trip over others and one is the service issue piracy is

        You’re not gonna convince cheaters to stop cheating by offering them a better experience

        • tabular@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          As a player I agree but as a software user and maker I don’t. Users should be in control of their own computing, therefore client-side anti-cheat is the unjust power over the user (edit, this applies to every other proprietary proprietary too).

          Has anyone tried? As far as I know the most that has been done is to shadowban cheaters to their own servers for matchmaking. No one has tried having built-in multiplayer cheats to compete with 3rd party cheats.

          • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            I don’t think clientside anticheat is a good solution by any means.

            Built in multiplayer cheats? Isn’t that just pay to win?

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    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

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      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).

    • ElmarsonTheThird@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 months ago

      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.

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      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.

  • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    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?

  • SpicyLizards@reddthat.com
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    2 months ago

    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

  • polle@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    Iam out of the loop. What kind of cheats are available in gta online?

    • Khrux@ttrpg.network
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      2 months ago

      The most common cheat is probably gaining money or experience, but there have always been pretty extensive mod menus for GTA Online with tools from invincibility to making your vehicles rainbow, to randomly causing other players to explode or setting hundreds of muggers on them.

      In 2015ish, I used to cheat, other than getting rich, all I was interested in doing was making an indestructible chrome bus with smoke trails that I’d drive around picking up players in, to teleport us all to North Yankton and back like a tour guide.

      • tweeks@feddit.nl
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        2 months ago

        Aren’t there like cheat servers and non-cheat servers? Or is that a “gentleman’s agreement” that not everyone is playing fair with if you can’t fully block it because of mods etc?

      • polle@feddit.org
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        2 months ago

        Thanks for the insight! Random chromebus with smoketrails sounds fun, thought.

    • jetsetdorito@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      They didn’t enable linux support on the anticheat, so the game no longer runs on Linux/steam deck

  • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    That’s disgusting! Where do those criminals gather, so I could go an express my utter disappointment to them directly?

  • MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    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

  • Buttons@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

    Couldn’t we avoid all this by giving players the option to host and moderate their own servers?

    • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      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$.

  • Soup@lemmy.cafe
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    2 months ago

    Imagine being such a butthurt little pussy that you DDoS a video game because you’re not allowed to cheat it.

    Outside of the political spectrum, I cannot imagine a more pathetic type of person.

  • Linktank@lemmy.today
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    2 months ago

    Bitchy cheaters throwing a hissy that they can’t keep creating an unfair advantage for themselves in an online environment. I hope their mothers take away their internet connection for the month.

    • KickMeElmo@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      Probably a few Linux/Steam Deck players pissed that Rockstar just nuked their ability to play without warning or reason as well.

      • Pasta Dental@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Heh, I would say the cheaters are generally much more immature and likely to DDOS. I think there is a lot of overlap over video game cheaters and script kiddies, especially when the cheaters are called hackers

        • Damage@feddit.it
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          2 months ago

          Qnd cheaters have money (the same they use to buy cheats) to pay for botnets

      • Linktank@lemmy.today
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        2 months ago

        Yeah that’s shitty. I’d rather the cheaters ruin the game for a subsection of the populace rather than all of them though.

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        I’m upset they nuked Linux support, my PC is Linux and have a steam deck

        I’m still not going to fucking ddos them for it

      • jonne@infosec.pub
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        2 months ago

        Eh, I was playing it on steam deck, GTA online was just not worth it with all the cheating anyway.

        What I don’t get is why they went with the most invasive kernel level stuff instead of doing even the most basic server side checks to check for users doing physically impossible stuff.

        • Wrench@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Man, that sounds familiar. I gave up on Escape from Tarkov for the same reason.

          • jonne@infosec.pub
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            2 months ago

            It’s just ridiculous the stuff you see that should be easy to catch with basic server checks (even if you were to run them after the fact). Players conjuring money and vehicles out of thin air, moving impossibly fast, vehicles/players with seemingly unlimited hit points, etc. You could easily catch that shit on the server side and ban the cheaters, but instead they go for the most invasive client side shit.

            Sure, if you want to stamp out stuff like aim bots and whatever eventually you’ll need to look at the client side of things, but in a decade they didn’t seem to do anything at all.

        • ysjet@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Because it’s cheaper than actually implementing working anti heat instead of just stealing control of your computer and leaving gaping vulnerabilities on it.

          After all, why would they care? It’s not their computer.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Server-side checks cost processing power and memory hence they need to spend more on servers.

          Client side kernel-level anti-cheat only ever consumes resources and cause problems to the actual gamers, not directly to Rockstart’s bottom line (and if it makes the game comms slightly slower on the client side it might even reduce server resource consumption).

          If Rockstar’s management theory is that gamers will endure just about any level of shit and keep on giving them money (a posture which, so far, has proven correct for just about every large game maker doing that kind of shit) then they will logically conclude that their bottom line won’t even suffer indirectly from making life harder for their existing clients whilst it will most definitelly suffer if they have more server costs due to implementing server side checks for cheating.