Modders in GTA 5 are hurting other people’s experience with the game

<div style=”font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;”><a href=”https://soundcloud.com/user-451700015&#8243; title=”8forty” target=”_blank” style=”color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;”>8forty</a> · <a href=”https://soundcloud.com/user-451700015/modders-in-gta-5-are-hurting-other-peoples-experience-with-the-game&#8221; title=”Modders in GTA 5 are hurting other people’s experience with the game” target=”_blank” style=”color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;”>Modders in GTA 5 are hurting other people’s experience with the game</a></div>

Grand Theft Auto 5 has made 6 billion dollars but it can’t fix its biggest problem.

I have personally sunk hours into GTA 5 Online, and overall, it’s great. But the game is a playground for modders and hackers, and that is a problem. Game developer Rockstar is not banning modders fast enough. Instead, modders have weaponized Rockstar’s banning system and have used it to attack innocent gamers.

A modder is someone who uses computing tools to change the way a game normally behaves. This can be used for creative purposes like creating new looks for items, but it can also be used in ways that disrupt competition in a game. A modder in a game like GTA might be able to spawn any item in the game, dropping endless money on someone’s head, or give anyone every gun in the game. 

If that sounds great to you, be warned: if you try to download mods off of the Internet for yourself, you could very well end up with a virus.

That said, there is a market for modded accounts. You can pay modders for the superpowered characters you want.

But modders are also using their coding abilities maliciously. Here’s how it works:

The game will automatically ban users who are detected with experience points or money that was gained through cheats. That sounds good in theory, but knowing this, modders will use it against other gamers, forcing money and experience points on unsuspecting victims, leading to their account being instantly banned and dropped from the game, permanently. 

In 2018 eSnowFrost account got banned in this way, and two years later, Rockstar has still not unbanned them. “I’ve contacted Rockstar,” the gamer reported. “But I keep getting copy and pasted messages… they are not helpful this time around.” 

RockStar does not seem to work with anyone who does get false banned.

Instead of banning people who suddenly have ill-gotten RP or money, Rockstar should check if the person was in a game with someone who was reported to be a hacker or someone who was banned. If so, they should simply delete the modded stats. 

Many people on Reddit seem to agree under the reddit that RockStar has to fix this problem and find a way to ban hackers and not innocent people “The pc version of this game is a complete and utter joke.” says one user.

If you find a bad review about GTA, chances are it is about modders ruining their experience. You’ll find comments on Steam like, “Too many modders/hackers online,” or “Mods = no fun,” or “filled with hackers.”  

Gamers put a lot of time and effort into their accounts and when they get permanently banned, all the time and effort is lost. 

If Rockstar would put in the time to fix the problem, the game would be more enjoyable and a lot of past players who left because of anger with modders might come back. Instead, Rocktar is moving in the opposite direction. They once had an online page where people could report cheaters. That has disappeared. 

“They don’t care,” summed up one user..