'GTA Online' Banwave: Rockstar Finally Responds to Issue With a Plan
The latest update for the PC version of "Grand Theft Auto Online" appears to have caused a sweeping ban, making victims out of those who did not even violate any rules that will constitute such.
According to Polygon, those who were at the receiving end of the banwave believe that they're being registered in the anticheat used by Rockstar Games as illegal modders. As a result, their accounts are banned and unusable for 30 days despite doing nothing wrong.
A "GTA Online" player who has been updating a thread on Reddit following the massive ban has reached out to Rockstar support to ask them about the issue.
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The representative confirmed that they are "aware" of the issue and are doing something about it. "The accounts will be personally looked in if the players come up with their issues," they went on to write.
The Redditor noted the change in narrative from the studio, whose initial disposition on the matter is for these bans to stick and not to be appealed.
While many actual cheaters usually claim innocence to avoid the punishment, the scale of this banwave, add to this the fact that it coincides with the latest PC update, suggest that this is more than someone trying to get out of a month's worth of no "GTA Online."
After all, there was instantly a surge of complaints on the game's forums and the developer's website as players worked to get the attention of Rockstar for the erroneous bans. Other gamers also took to social media to grumble.
The initial speculation is that these wrongful bans are being triggered by the update on the game's "tunables" that added what was first understood as the Hotring anticheat.
However, the line of code in the tunables that is suspected to be the culprit is not connected in the issue at all since it was simply added there to promote the latest series of races that turned out to be called Hotring.
The response of Rockstar support, however, gives "GTA Online" gamers hope that they will get to the bottom of the issue to ultimately lift the ban on those who were mistakenly registered as modders on the game's anticheat.
While the response from the Rockstar Support agent is not everything and gamers know by now that half the time this does not guarantee anything, another Reddit user reminds "GTA Online" players that to successfully reach the company, make sure not to use the word ban or choose the ban category when reporting the issue.
Otherwise, the support ticket will be closed automatically and there will be no way to reach the studio though it. That being said, "GTA Online" gamers would want to inform them of the situation without using "ban" in their explanation.
While it looks like solving this "GTA Online" banwave will be a herculean fear considering it involves thousands of accounts, the possibility that the latest update is the root of it all suggests that there could be a one-time solution.
