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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.
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Sounds like it’s working
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.
They implemented this 10 years after the game’s release. It’s harder to vote with your wallet at that point.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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’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…
I did this with Blizzard/Activision years ago.
Zero impact.
It was an impact of one.
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.
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.
In your opinion.
Stop gatekeeping people’s game choices. You can play what you want, and they can play what they want.
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.
there is no reason you have to run intrusive anticheat just to play your favorite multiplayer game it can stop hackers but you will force people on the most trash os ever windows i love valves approach to vac but people say its not that good
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 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?
They’re kinda proving rockstar’s point, I am fairly sure the venn diagram of “protesters” (ddosers) and cheaters is more or less a circle
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.
Without hard data it’s difficult to tell to what extent this is accurate, but there seems to be a substantial portion of Linux gamers (including Steam Deck users) who are pissed off that due to the anti-cheat they can’t play the game on their platform of choice anymore. Some of them may have joined the DDoS campaign, so there is a genuine venn diagram.
I think people misunderstood my comment, I meant I think the ddosers and the cheaters are more or less the same group. Don’t imagine the majority of people in the Linux community would think that’s a good way to get rockstar to listen
What’s the overlap of cheaters and people who perform DDoS attacks?
That’s what I mean, I imagine most of the people ddosing are cheaters, hence the quotations around protesters
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.
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
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.
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.
Probably a few Linux/Steam Deck players pissed that Rockstar just nuked their ability to play without warning or reason as well.
Those are legitimate victims, fuck the cheaters.
The cheaters have already found a way to bypass this stupid shit. It only affects legitimate users and cheaters too stupid to figure out the seemingly trivial workaround.
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.
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.
Man, that sounds familiar. I gave up on Escape from Tarkov for the same reason.
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.
That kind of stuff catches legitimate users all the time. In Rust for example it’s common to get kicked for “fly hacking” while jumping on vehicles. The more open-ended the game the more weird edge cases become very relevant. Especially if it has a halfway decent physics sim. Tons of ways to give players weird velocities. Then it has to account for the variance ping introduces…
Some stuff, yeah. Should be easy to check if a player has too much HP. But spoofed communication between the client and server is a tough nut to crack when you can only see what the client wants you to see. Keeping everything server-side would help but that introduces latency to every input, unacceptable for anything even moderately paced.
All thay said, it would be a lot easier to swallow the “necessary evil” argument if it actually fucking worked.
I’m pretty sure there’s not a valid reason for players to be able to spawn giant Ferris wheels in people’s garages, that seems like a fairly easy one to test for
Battleye is supported on steam deck
But honestly FUCK kernel level ACs
Battleye is, but they didn’t enable it for Linux. Literally a switch, and they failed to do so.
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
Qnd cheaters have money (the same they use to buy cheats) to pay for botnets
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
Linux users playing dirty? Not a good look.
Yeah that’s shitty. I’d rather the cheaters ruin the game for a subsection of the populace rather than all of them though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattlEye
Interacts with the game at the kernel level.
Fuck cheaters, but also FUCK kernel level shit, it’s possible to make a good AC without fucking around in the kernel.
I don’t even install third party Antivirus’ that hook into the kernel because of all the issues it causes. 80% of all BSODs I’ve traced back have always had a root cause because of some shit piece of software fucking around in the kernel. 15% is shitty drivers.
Kernel AVs and ACs actually act like malware in of itself with the types of hooks and interactions it performs. Anything operating at the kernel level can basically see just about everything you or your computer is doing
Fuck kernel level AC
it’s possible to make a good AC without fucking around in the kernel.
What if the cheat runs in the kernel? I am also against these extremely invasive anti-cheat measures, but it must be clear to everyone that the cheat developers and users have no qualms about this.
A user level AC can do shit all against that if the cheat runs in ring 0.
80% of all BSODs I’ve traced back have always had a root cause because of some shit piece of software fucking around in the kernel
CrowdStrike has entered the chat.
They’ve been a boom to the cyber security industry though, even though it wasn’t a virus and didn’t really damage anything simply the fact that it happened has forced management to actually appreciate the importance of cyber security, and cyber integrity.
They are hiring like crazy now.
Now if only the United States could be convinced that remote working isn’t the work of the devil, we might be in for a productive few decades in the technology space. No need for AI
