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.
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.
Especially a big problem for people who play on Steam Deck. Which most game companies don’t consider it a Console, which is stupid.
Some devs sure do fear linux users.
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.
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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
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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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.
rockstar is such a small indie company, how could they even afford to fix bugs…
Because Linux users file bug reports.
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.
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
Normal users do that on Windows, why would anyone install Linux for that
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.
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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.
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.
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?
No? I’ve had an account for a long time?
Oh, this is the first time you’ve left either hexbear or ml then.
Never been to either. Sorry that you’re feeling so defensive about a simple joke response to your hilarious video game/internet tough guy/I am very badass rant.
Not sure how that makes me someone from either of those instances but it is genuinely funny to see someone go straight to some dumb tankie or communist or what-the-fuck-ever they are name calling shit over something so silly 😂
As if laughing at your totallyhappened story makes someone a Russian plant or a Chinese Holocaust denier or whatever dumb thing ignorant people are going on about now.
Tl:Dr
Stay mad. Touch grass.
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???
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$.
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’ve heard rockstar recruited fivem developers
Most of them got kicked from the project
And owns everything now
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.
Unpopular opinion…
Man, I wrote a whole WoT about this. Deleted it. Fuck the cheaters. I don’t know why it’s so hard to stop them. The kind of people that will DDoS a company for blocking them are the same ones that will cheat. No gold star for any honest players that DDoS, either. If there’s a server problem or a bad patch that prevents me from playing my first thought isn’t to DDoS the company and fuck up everyone else’s game in a fit of petty revenge too. That said, it’s sad that honest players are the only ones harmed after the cheat coders found their workaround so quickly.
That’s not what this is about, the article is simply garbage. They are enforcing a kernel level anti-cheating system that is incompatible with Linux (where no third party gets kernel access, and rightly so). This locks out all Linux players, including Steam Deck.
Rockstar makes such weird choices considering how passionate their fans are.
Which ultimately makes being a passionate Rockstar fan a weirder and weirder choice.
Sounds like it’s working
At one point I had been playing GTA V online pretty consistently when I had a cheater start targeting me. It was pretty frustrating and after 30 minutes of that I gave up and closed down for the day. I shifted my attention to other games after that. I definitely get that they want to stop cheaters - cheaters ruin the fun for others. It’s a shame that the new anti cheat has made it so that Steam Deck players are stuck unable to play online.
The very annoying this is that BattleEye supports Linux, rockstar has just apparently decided not to ask for that from BattleEye
Not that I particularly want to play it, but the Fortnite requirement has stopped me from installing Mint across some computers for kids for this reason as well.
The fact that it’s a top 10 seller on steam deck for years and they just fucked over everyone on Linux, they deserve it. We all paid them and they completely screwed all of us. I feel so cheated. I only run Linux and I have a steam deck. I left a bad review on steam and I contacted their support from all my rockstar accounts, but it’s not enough. Battleye is compatible with Linux, they just had to send an email, but rockstar keeps lying that it’s not compatible.
Even if it’s not compatible, “ok then where’s my damn refund?”
Basically theft, really.
I still blame valve a lot for this. Their TOS offer us no protection. Publishers should not be able to retroactively lock down a game. Diminishing the game performance or adding unwanted DRM after purchase should be a refundable offense. People choose whether or not to buy games based on properties like these.
Valve has consistently offered refunds in these scenarios. They’re offering them for GTA V, and they also offered refunds for Monster Hunter when Capcom decided to switch their DRM bullshit and broke it on the Steam Deck. I think Valve has done their part.
Valve is going beyond any point in comparison to any other software company I know.
What is the basis of consistently here. Take2 broke Linux support for bioshock infinite a couple years back and valve refused my refund request. IME they have not done so. If they are for GTAV that’s great. Maybe they only started doing this after the steamdeck came out but really they should have protections in the TOS to safeguard consumer purchases.
I’m unsure if GTA V was ever Steamdeck Certified, but I imagine it might have to do with that. They may only offer this for games they said were certified and the devs broke it after the fact. I know Monster Hunter was.
You can request a refund. An earlier post last week said they are offering refunds for rug-pulled players.
One important thing to add is that the refund is offered by Valve, not by Rockstar.
I guess Valve being the escrow, they may hold future revenue payout from sale of other R* games
But I don’t believe at the scale of thousands of players for >1 year.
Remember, they are (supposedly) offering it even if you played a 100 hundred hours. I don’t think that comes only from Valve. They’d burn bridges with publishers should they deduct it from their pay as a “You rugpulled our user base. We are now offering refunds if requested and will take it from your cut as compensation”.
Well at least that’s good tbf.
I was thinking this, because that’s what Facepunch did when they stopped Linux support. If you had played Rust at all on Linux, regardless of hours, you were eligible for a refund.
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
I’m not going to condone this, but also… haha.
I don’t play these games or really any game that needs anti cheat. What’s the controversy? I assume the anti cheat is awful?
While I haven’t looked into this particular anti-cheat; they frequently prevent Linux users from playing altogether, ban users due to false positives, and sometimes even gain/require access to data entirely unrelated to gaming, such as your personal documents or even browser data (cookies, history, passwords/tokens, etc) as many of them contain Rootkits
On top of that they dont really seem to actually stop cheating. Im sure they reduce it but games with anti cheat still deal with a ton of cheaters
Seriously, personal documents? What in the ever loving fuck. Jeez, no I don’t want to play your game so bad I need to prove it with a passport.
To be fair, they aren’t specifically targeting this data.
Rootkits give the software unrestricted access to all the data on the computer. You then trust that they don’t use that access for anything nefarious… Aswell as trusting there’s no bugs/vulnerabilities in that software that give a third party access to that data.
Ah, my misunderstanding - kernel level anti-cheat is also a bit bizarre tbh, like people really really don’t understand the level of control they’re handing over to random games companies.
What’s happened is GTA Online suddenly switched to using BattlEye for it’s anti-cheating. And this broke Steam Deck compatibility suddenly. Now, this is bad enough but reports state that BattlEye will work with the Steam Deck, and all Rockstar needs to do is just send a message to BattlEye and it’ll just work. But Rockstar doesn’t seem to be interested in sending that email.
So a bunch of assholes who like to ruin everyone else’s fun are mad because they can’t be script kiddie cheaters anymore. So instead they found another way to run everyone else’s fun. Cool.
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.
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…
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’m pretty sure it’s not Linux gamers doing this.
It’s cheaters.
Cheat creators probably, they gotta protect their revenue
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.
I definitely encourage it!
It’s one of the most polished games I’ve played, that is currently in circulation, as of the 2.0 update. I think you will like it now if you previously were disappointed
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.
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.
Get friends with better values.
Articles a joke since it doesn’t mention that the people pissed off are the linux players. Not the cheaters but the linux users.
That’s why one never pisses off a Linux user.
There’s a patch for proton for Battleye. My understanding is that it’s really easy for developers to support Linux with it, but I think they’re using their own engine, so things may be harder. Regardless, that’s bullshit if they added something without considering Linux users.
time for refunds.
Steam has refunded games that added anti-cheat that broke linux playability in the past iirc
They have also denied refunds if a game is running in the background and you have 100 hours while editing a spreadsheet, so tread lightly
Didnt hear about that one, but I do recall some stories of people playing hundreds of hours, dev making a major catastrophic change, and steam still giving the refund.
I’ve been denied a refund for a game I played for 2 minutes and realized was trash. When I quit it went back to a popped-under splash screen instead of quitting to desktop. I turned off the monitor for the night and the next day when I requested the refund, Steam said I played it for too long and denied my refund.
It was a game under $10 so I didn’t lose much but it was still bullshit.
Not related to the refund at all, but: Why would you turn off the monitor and not the computer? Even when idling it eats way more power than a monitor in standby.
I’d always leave my computer on but turn off the monitor. Usually it would go to sleep or hibernate, but certain programs would keep it awake. Keep in mind this was during the Win 7 era so it wasn’t foolproof and it would just stay on.
After having talked to some on the GTA V SCUD, so many think we are in support of the cheaters and are framing our frustration around us just wanting the cheaters back.
i never liked the online to begin with so, x
