For some time now widespread cheating has been a fact of life for those playing GTA Online. Some folks enjoyed the lawless nature of GTA Online, while others complained cheaters were making the game unplayable, but few thought much was going to be done about the situation. Well, turns out we were wrong, as Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive have launched a major crackdown on cheaters.
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As you may have heard, popular modding tool OpenIV recently got the kibosh. OpenIV is only designed for use with the single-player Grand Theft Auto V, but it’s been used as a foundation for various hacking mods and tools afflicting GTA Online, so it got caught in the blowback. Players aren’t taking the death of OpenIV well, tanking the game’s Steam reviews.
Well, OpenIV got off easy – Take-Two has unleashed much harsher retribution against actual cheating mods like Force Hax, Lexicon, and Menyoo. These mod menus allowed players to gift themselves money, steal from others, kick players from the game, and other nefarious things, and their makers charged real-world cash to use them. Or at least, they did. Take-Two has deep-sixed these cheat mods, and is forcing their developers to donate all their profits to charity. Here’s what the makers of Force Hax had to say for themselves:
“After discussions with Take-Two Interactive, effective immediately we are ceasing all maintenance, development and distribution of the Force Hax cheat menu services. We will be donating our proceeds to charity and we apologize for any and all problems Force Hax services have caused to the Grand Theft Auto Online community.”
Yup, Take-Two is not messing around. So, why are they suddenly taking GTA Online cheaters so seriously? I’m betting it has to do with a new mod we reported on that let cheaters remotely steal other players’ cash. Previous cheats were annoying, but Take-Two sells GTA Online bucks for real money. In fact, GTA Online microtransactions made up nearly half of Take-Two’s revenue last year, so something had to be done. Seems the cheaters got too clever for their own good.
You can check out all WWG’s latest Grand Theft Auto V coverage here, and our extensive back catalog of stories, right here.
[via VG 24/7]
