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.
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?
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.
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
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
As it should be. Rockstar Games deserves nothing less.
Good.
Sounds like it’s working
Rockstar makes such weird choices considering how passionate their fans are.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes!
90% of the games I buy now are couch coop. Was sad about Halo abandoning it.
Couch coop defined my view of what video games are.
I wish more games came with couch co-op. It was a lot of fun in Halo and Diablo.
Couch co-op gta san andreas was the best, so sad it’s not more common in present games.
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)
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?
Course you can. I never even touched the multiplayer.
I attempted to load it back on the PS3, sat in a queue for about ten minutes and gave up. Probably for the best.
According to Mutahar:
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The Anti Cheat has already been bypassed by a free cheat menu on Windows.
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He’s fairly sure he has figured out some kind of way to temporarily bypass (as in, it’ll probably get caught in a few weeks) the linux block by some kind of custom virtualization method (requiring only one GPU) that he says he may explain in detail at some point.
In general, he’s done with playing GTO.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eMSagozpKPs&pp=ygUSbXV0YWhhciBndGEgb25saW5l
But yeah, obligatory reminder for BattleEye and EasyAntiCheat games that refuse to allow linux play:
All these game devs have to do is flip a switch, click a few options in their developer portals, to allow BattleEye or EAC to work on linux, through Proton.
And its been that way for 3 years, since 2021.
There is literally no reason for games that use these services to not work on linux, the devs just don’t fucking care.
I had been wondering why everybody was so angry at them for implementing anti-cheat software. I didn’t realize that they were locking out Linux users. That’s a bunch of bullshit.
Dont blame developers. It’s never developers that make decisions. It’s the management, the shareholders, the project manager, the product owner, the whatever-mba-dipshit on top. But never the developers. They just execute and comply and if they refuse, they’re let go. A developer is a fleshy code printer. A resource. They don’t have real power. They’re a factory worker. Remember that. Don’t blame the worker, blame the boss.
Source: i’m a professional software developer.
This.
I follow code of ethics and raise concerns where applicable. But even if you refuse, they’ll just pick another development team out of their hats to implement anyway.
So many are afraid to lose their jobs now they will keep their heads down and do it anyway.
Some devs sure do fear linux users.
It feels like it’s part and parcel with an overall, growing trend in software to be openly hostile to any system wherein the user has proper admin rights.
Because the potential for someone to use those rights to fuck with the software merits refusing to support systems where they can.
Further entrenching the notion that, to participate in a “modern” consumer software environment, the user must agree to be handcuffed on their own hardware.
The potential?
People are hacking the shit out of any online game without proper anticheats
*with or without
FTFY
I’ve heard devs say that Linux users come up with something like 90% of the bug reports. They’re often bugs that only affect Linux,so you’ve got, say 10% to the player base reporting 90% of the issues, and about 85% of those issues only affect the 10% of the player base.
Simply from an economics standpoint it doesn’t make sense to spend that much resources on such a small percentage of the player population. Additionally about half of those Linux users do have Windows computers, that they are prepared to buy your game on, if that’s the only option. So again it makes no financial sense to actually support Linux.
As far as the studios see it they are taking a 5% cut in profits, in order to reduce workload by 85% - seems like a good deal.
I can’t even really argue with that, because they make a good point. Indie devs have it even more difficult because they often have much smaller teams, and really can’t handle the workloads that Linux users would give them.
Because Linux users file bug reports.
The devs from ΔV: Rings of Saturn give a completely different story. Yeah, most bug reports come from Linux - but platform specific ones a vanishingly rare: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/
Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux. The rest of them were affecting everyone - the thing is, the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs. That is just the open-source way. This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone. Just like having your own 700-person strong QA team. That was not 38% extra work for me, that was just free QA!
Not to mention the quality of the reports from the Linux users was vastly more details and useful to them.
Cool game, btw, if anyone hasn’t heard of it.
Who was that developer? Where are those numbers from? Any sources?
I remember ~9 years ago the Blizzard CEO said this: “[…] I would assume most of those people also have access to a Windows or Mac device capable of playing Blizzard games.” https://www.change.org/p/blizzard-entertainment-support-please-release-native-linux-clients/u/9982826
Which is pretty disrespectful, but just one part of these arguments.
Thats was a. From years before proton, b. from a dev renowned for being linux hostile, c. ignores the fact that linux users are far more likely to be technical and likely to submit a proper bug report rather than shrugging and moving on.
I’m not sure who you’re referring to but I got this off a developer forum about 3 years ago. I don’t know which dev came from just a number of developers chimed in to say they agree
I presumed you were refering to this which was quite high profile at the time.
I don’t want to discount what you saw, but I don’t think Linux gamers are even asking for official support. If they don’t want bug reports from Linux gamers because the reports would be “tainted” by an unsupported operating system, then they could have a banner on the submission page. I would argue, however, that they would be missing out on a lot of free bug testing where all of these companies are far too cheap to pay for proper bug testing these days.
At this point, Linux gamers would just appreciate the bare minimum being put forth with developers not breaking the games for them.
Quite a bit has changed with regards to Linux gaming, even within the past 3 years.
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I’m not confused what they said. That’s what they said, now what they said may be wrong, but I’m not confused about what they said.
However what I have been told is that actually that’s not necessarily the case. Because the reporting issues that only affect Linux operating systems so most of the user base are not actually benefiting from the reports.
Wisdom is that they would submit better quality tickets and they do but since most of them are disproportionately Linux limited is not really as much of an advantage as you would think.
Wrong on every point, especially the personal opinion.
Go look at the other user which quoted accurately without misrepresentation.
I’m not aware that I provided a personal opinion for me to be wrong about
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If I played any Rockstar games, I’d be unhappy with their new anti-cheat too, since it needlessly blocks linux, but this isn’t the way this should be protested. If anything, this probably validates their decision.
The way this should be protested is to just stop playing. Stop giving them money. Stop boosting their month active user numbers that they can flaunt to investors. Hit them financially, since it’s the only hit they really care about. There’s a sea of other high-quality games you can play instead.
Have you tried not buying something in protest? If so have you noticed they keep selling it anyway and you have no alternative? Not giving them money isn’t enough.
I’m not a fan of DoSA as it’s rather strongarm but at least this actually sends a message to them AND other users.
I’m not interested in having to fight anti-features to play what I paid for, but at least circumventing it sends a message.
I bought Crysis and didn’t like the DRM, so I haven’t bought a Ubisoft game since. How’s that working out for Ubisoft?
I think Ubisoft didn’t notice, or very likely attributed others reasons for less sales.
I don’t like DRM so I don’t use streaming services like Netflix. If friends or work colleges keep talking about some show then I read Wikipedia plot section to get an idea 💀
And I think their board is panicking trying to figure out how they can regain me, specifically, as a customer.
More seriously, I apparently am not the only one who eventually got their fill of Ubisoft games. I think Ubisoft has planted resentment in the minds of all their customers, and as soon as they slipped a little in game quality their customers were more than happy to leave, just for the sake of leaving.
if so have you noticed they keep selling it anyway and you have no alternative?
You seem to have missed the point. The alternative is not playing the game at all.
Be an adult, have some self-control.
As an adult you may notice you spend less time with your friends. So if you’ve tried that you’d know how sad it is when you can’t play games with your friends because of your values. When you care about video games then your interpretation of “the point” leaves a lot to be desired. I aspire for a better gaming industry.
I did this with Blizzard/Activision years ago.
Zero impact.
Keep it up. There’s dozen(s) of us?
There’s dozen(s) of us?
Dozen(s?) Denial Of Service attack
Denial of Playing attack.
It was an impact of one.
I’ve read that Steam is accepting refunds for GTAV - I’d recommend anyone who bought it there refund it.
Really??? Even if I bought it years ago lmao? It no longer works on my steam deck, but its not like I bought it when the deck even existed. However, I did have that idea…
Gamers and still buying the same old tired shit while bitching about it, name a more…
You’re absolutely right. The number of great games to play is absurd and the access to them has never been better but for some reason most people just play mediocre games that should have been put out to pasture years ago.
GTA Online has terrible monetization and Rockstar are openly hostile towards PC as a platform, but I wouldn’t call GTA mediocre at all. There’s nothing quite like the attention to detail or breadth of GTA games. If you’ve played a few GTA clones, you’ll know what the competition looks like and it’s not even close.
Idk Cyberpunk makes GTA look like a intern project.
Maybe I need to give Cyberpunk 2077 another shot.
In your opinion.
Stop gatekeeping people’s game choices. You can play what you want, and they can play what they want.
We’re in a thread about Rockstars invasive anti-cheat software so no, people can’t play what they want nor is this the place to tell people not to gatekeep.
I’m pretty sure it’s not Linux gamers doing this.
It’s cheaters.
Cheat creators probably, they gotta protect their revenue
Yeah, I’m actually supportive of some kind of anti cheat on GTA online, because with all the cheating it’s just unplayable. Unfortunately I was playing on steam deck so I haven’t been able to play it since. Presumably it can be supported relatively easy so I hope they fix that issue.
I bought Red Dead Redemption for myself and three friends, super excited about the game, the lore. I had never spent that much money on a game.
We all played through the single player tutorial, and finally into the open world. We meet up and begin exploring and trying to complete quests when suddenly one of us just … drops dead.
Then another is hit by a meteor and caught on fire?
I am thrown up into the sky.
An alien ship?! Appears and messes with us for a while. I try begging in pub chat for the hacker to please leave us so we can play, which seems to goad them further. This continued for an hour.
A quick look around the internet told us that this was par for the course for RDR and GTA and Rockstar couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything about it.
We ended up refunding all the games through steam. Sad times.
Firstly, yeah… RDRO is utterly plauged with all sorts of cheaters using trainers and all kinds of cheats is full of crap, at least for PC.
The standard strategy you basically have to employ is that whenever you see something nonsense like that happen is you have to jump to another instance/lobby. Depending on your luck, you may have to do this every 15 to 60 minutes aaaand some cheats allow the cheater to follow you to your new lobby.
Secondly…
A few years back I was in RDRO and was attacked by a cheater.
I had a broke ass level 15ish character with the just a few of the least expensive guns.
They had infinite ammo. Teleport hopping. Spawned 10 additional NPCs versions of themselves, then of my character, then zombies, then legendary animals (basically fucking monsters).
All the while they’re scrambling their name in the scoreboard every minute and create spoofs to make it harder to actually do a report or have the grievance system actually work correctly.
I killed them all. I died over and over again, but I kept killing them. Whittled down the fake names and spoofs and kept doing the grievance thing until it was actually landing on one consistent name.
Then the cheater began spawning gigantic props like boats attached to their character, which rotated and hit with physics force when they rotated, which they could shoot out of but I could not shoot into.
But uh, I managed to juke my way through cracks in the collision mesh, then shoot him.
He got tired of this at some point… and just turned himself invisible.
But, by this point I’d been killed enough times that I’d managed to get him showing up on my radar.
I’d by then long since run out of ammo… and began stalking him, via radar, with just a knife and lasso, sometimes the running tackle with the lasso that leads into a hogtie, other times actually managing to sneak up behind him, executing an invisible foe.
After an hour and a half of this, he started slipping up, and I could see him attempting to flee me, teleport half a klik away and just stand there for 30 seconds, then move a bit, then pause again, presumably fiddling around in his menus.
I killed him a few more times in this state, and he quit, he left.
… I would have just jumped to another instance if he had not killed my horse.
Do not fuck with a man’s horse lol.
… anyway, yeah. hung up my hat after that. fucking nonsense.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
You really made an account just to post this singular comment?
You could have made a private lobby. Although RDR Online isnt too exciting anyway.
Odd, I don’t recall private lobbies being a thing, and a quick google shows lots of people asking for them and a few “workarounds”. Perhaps they are a recent addition or a console thing?
I haven’t played in a few years but this is how I remember the system working: RDO matches people into separate lobbies based on what version of the game they’re running and this check is done by hashing one or more files in the install directory. By adding junk data to one of those files you more or less guarantee that you’ll only ever encounter other people who have the same junk data added. It’s basically the dark souls password system with extra steps.
Maybe I used a mod or something, I dont know, wasnt very memorable aha (well all I remember is excessive amounts of fog), quickly gave up on it.
Before private lobbies in GTA, I remember blocking ports for GTA in my firewall except to my friends’ IP addresses, which worked for a while.
