- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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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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
It was an impact of one.
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.
I’ve read that Steam is accepting refunds for GTAV - I’d recommend anyone who bought it there refund it.
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’m pretty sure it’s not Linux gamers doing this.
It’s cheaters.
Cheat creators probably, they gotta protect their revenue
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
Every online game is like that now. I avoid all of them for that reason. It doesn’t matter the game, if it starts to get popular the massive group of trolls shows up and goes out of there way to figure out the methodology to ruin the gameplay for others.
It sucks because there have been a few fun games that a lot of people won’t touch due to the online nature of garbage humans. Helldivers 2, SM2, and Deep Rock Galactic (sorry, your community is also filled with shitters) are all ruined because in order to really advance in the game you HAVE to play with others. It’s piss poor game design.
I played WoW right when it came out, on a PvP server.
There was already a subset of the crowd just like there back then - some people rushed game progression to have higher levels as soon as possible only to then hang out in beginner areas and “pwn” significantly lower level players.
That’s around the time when the term “griefer” was coined.
In these things the real difference is how the servers are structured rather than the human beings: if the architecture is designed so that there is some way to filter players (smaller servers with moderation or some kind of kick voting system that bans repeat offenders), griefers end up in their own griefer instances griefing each other and the rest can actually play the game, otherwise you get a deeply beginner (or people with less time, such as working adults) unfriendly environment.
As somebody else pointed out environments were people run their own servers tend create those conditions at least for some cases (basically if there’s some kind of moderation) whilst massive world centralized server environments tend to give free right to people whose pleasure in a multiplayer games derives mostly from making it unpleasent for others (in game-making, griefing is actually recognized as one of the 4 core types of enjoyment - along with achiving, exploring and socializing - people can derived from multiplayer games)
It’s amazing to me that Blizzard spent 15 years with the PvP realms in such a broken state. It was only when they introduced “war mode” and the option to turn it off that people finally had some relief.
What finally made them address the problem was that many PvP realms had become 95% one faction and 5% the other faction. That meant that any PvP encounters were very one-sided, and they were also very rare, because the outnumbered faction just avoided any areas where they might be attacked.
Even if you lived for griefing, being on the dominant side in a 95% your-side realm sucked because there weren’t enough victims to pick on.
I guess they wanted to make griefers happy because making the game fair for people who enjoyed PvP but didn’t want to grief others would have been relatively easy.
wait, can you not play GTA single player anymore?
But how can we milk you for subscription money that way?
Couch co-op gta san andreas was the best, so sad it’s not more common in present games.
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.
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
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.
deleted by creator
What rights?
You’re buying a license to play a game. Rockstar is not obligated to ensure it’s available to you indefinitely.
“What!? You don’t like the erosion of ownership rights? You’re an asshole!” - you.
They’re trying to argue that an EULA isn’t binding because they can’t sign away their rights, and thats legally incorrect in this case.
Recognizing reality is different than endorsing it.
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 won’t be buying other Rockstar games if they do this with other Rockstar games, since it means I won’t be able to play them since I use Linux and they don’t want to use the checkmark to enable BattlEye on Linux/Proton.
Probably testing it for gta6.
And that’s the one we can refuse to buy.
But let’s be honest - people won’t. They’ll buy it in record numbers - just not on Linux.
Right, I bought that shit in 2014 I think. Haven’t played it in several years.
Is “get rid of all anti-cheat” a popular position outside of Lemmy? I don’t really play these sorts of games but was under the impression that most competitive multiplayer would be unplayable without anti-cheat measures.
There are plenty of anti-cheat measure that doesn’t require invasive access to your system or performance hits. The objection is not to fighting cheating, it is with the specific overreaching methodology chosen to do so.
Also I personally rarely play multiplayer so it’s even more frustrating to have bullshit installed on my system for a feature that doesn’t even apply to me.
Anti-cheat measures should be baked into the server side. 99 percent of the multiplayer cheating problem is not adhering to the golden rule of server security: Never Trust the Client
It’s not even popular on Lemmy. People are fine with the anti-cheat. They draw the line at enforced third-party accounts, though, which is commendable.
It is perfectly possible to run anti-cheat that are roughly as good (or as bad, as it often turns out) without full admin privilege and running as kernel-level drivers. Coupled with server-side validation, which seems to be a dying breed, you’d also weed out a ton of cheaters while missing the most motivated of them.
As someone who lurks around in different communities (to some extent; Steam forums, reddit, lemmy, mastodon, and a few game-centered discord servers), the issue is not much against anti-cheat for online play. It’s the nature of these piece of software that is the issue. It would not be the same if the anti-cheat was also forced on solo gameplay, but it is not the case here.
(bonus points for systems that allow playing on non-protected servers, but that’s asking a bit too much from some publishers I suppose)
It didn’t have “invasive user side anti-cheat” on day one you doughnut
That’s why Linux users bought it. This was added YEARS after release
Where did I even remotely imply otherwise?
“Don’t buy games with invasive user-side anti-cheats that hamper performance, and demand refunds on any game…”
1st point: AC Wasn’t there at purchase
2nd point: AC was added decades later so how can one return the game?
and demand refunds on any game that adds it after purchase.
This, which is in my original fucking message, applies here. If you think the effort is futile, fine, whatever, don’t try. But my statement was made with full understanding of the timeline, and I stand by it. Feel free to read the rest of the comments in the thread for further discussion of the timeline, or feel free to fuck off, I guess; I’m not in the mood to indulge a pedant clearly just looking for an argument.
No it doesn’t, at least not everwhere.
If you wanna be an idoitic asshat, and get all pissy because someone points out a flaw in your argument, thats not my problem.
I legitimately avoided rockstar for years because they force you to use their store even when you buy on steam. I still haven’t played rdr2, despite critical acclaim. I finally caved and got GTAV on sale cause I realised none of this shit works. Consumers using purchasing power to enforce standards is a losing battle. The storefronts or legislators need to enforce this shit. I think it should be valve. They have the market position and userbase to actually succeed or at the very least convince publishers to not break shit that was already working fine.
Name one war which was ever fought on a single battlefield.
Yes, we should be pushing for both regulatory changes and changes on platforms like Steam, but we should also being doing our part.
If there is anything I’ve learned over time it is that nobody is coming to save you. Ever. If you are holding out for someone to swoop in and make things better, you will be waiting forever. Either we do it ourselves, or it doesn’t get done.
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.
That’s disgusting! Where do those criminals gather, so I could go an express my utter disappointment to them directly?
Sounds like it’s working
Good.
I’m not going to condone this, but also… haha.
The most confusing part about this is that people are still playing GTA Online. Why…?
People enjoy video game, more news at 11
Because it keeps getting updates?
I’m still playing old school RuneScape.
Nobody ever stops playing osrs, we just take breaks
Hardcore normies.
Cash cow
At least you can turn it off in singleplayer and still use your mods there. That’s a pretty important consideration imho.
How do those community servers for RP work? Do they require mods? Do they still work?
Pretty sure Rockstar allows community servers to disable the anti-cheat as well, just like single player.
The GTA RP community at this point is a considerable part of why people are still playing GTA.
As it should be. Rockstar Games deserves nothing less.
As someone who is pretty old and is a crap gamer - well firstly I only play single player so I guess it wouldn’t effect me. But what’s the problem with anti cheat? Aside from it being code you don’t want on your machine. I dunno, I don’t get why people cheat. Isn’t it a better feeling when you just play and get good?
Edit - I’m not defending rockstar btw. Don’t know the politics here. In fact last game I enjoyed was vice city on the PS2. I’m trying to hey caught up on everything I missed. But yeah, what’s the problem with anti cheat?
Aside from it being code you don’t want on your machine. I dunno, I don’t get why people cheat. Isn’t it a better feeling when you just play and get good?
I’ve done some cheating on GTAO, so I can speak to this a bit.
For me, the next biggest reason after the one you listed is that their game is grindy as fuck. I want to be able to play with the cool vehicles and toys in the game, but they’re locked behind hours and hours of grinding, even just for a single item. I understand some people like that, but it’s not for me. But it’s also not just grinding that’s the problem. Their loading screens in the game are frequent, slow (1-5 minute of loading each), and are filled with shitty crews that make it impossible to do the missions.
So back when I used to play I had a script that would just give me shit loads of money. I could buy what I wanted, have fun, and move on. Games are for fun, not for feeling like they’re a second job.
What’s worse, is that Rockstar intentionally makes it grindy so you’re motivated to steal your mom’s credit cards and use real world money to buy fake world money that lasts you about 20 minutes. It’s very scummy behavior, and cheating is a way to get around that.
The script kiddies that just like to fuck with other people are a whole other can of worms. Those people can get bent.
I wasn’t expecting the perspective of an online game cheater on this to be so interesting, but that was really very interesting. Thanks for sharing it.
Of course, you’re welcome
Ethical cheating? Nice. I can get behind that.
Hmm thanks for the reply. Actually mate I kinda see your point. Like I said, I’m just getting into gaming after maybe a twenty year gap and I’ve not played much online stuff. Yeah I can see it would be frustrating to have all the cool shit behind a grind wall.
I guess when I heard cheating I was thinking of people who gain an unfair advantage and ruin the game for others. That’s the sort of cheating I don’t understand.
Back in the day, there were cheats in computer magazines, a sequence of key presses that would give you loads of lives or money or bullets or whatever. I used those an loved em.
Back in the day, there were cheats in computer magazines, a sequence of key presses that would give you loads of lives or money or bullets or whatever. I used those an loved em.
I still use those for my Nintendo DS. My dad had an extension card for his Sega genesis that did the same.
Cheats like that are as old as games themselves, and they’re not going to be going anywhere any time soon.
It’s just that now we have online versions, and if you’re on PC you can edit any memory address you like, directly, with any value you like.
Yeah, I remember the days when you’d get computer magazines for the Sinclair spectrum (I had the 48k) or the BBC b (now that’s was a great machine, basic interpreter and assembly compiler). When you bought games back then they were on a cassette tape. Sometimes the magazines would have those cheats - like you said, a code or sequence of keys for more lives n stuff. Back when I was playing vice city on the PS2 I remember finding a cheat that would drop a tank. Loved that shit. I am just getting back into gaming after a long gap (just finished bioshock, wow!) and I’ve not really done any online stuff. I probably won’t for a while, I’m way too old and shit, I’d get slaughtered by kids! Last time I played stuff against other humans was unreal tournament on a kinda LAN thing we set up in a squat way back. But I dunno, I think if I was playing that shit and getting slaughtered by kiddies a quarter of my age - I’d just play something else. Anything we do in life, there’s always people who are gonna be better at it. I’m thinking the way to deal with that is to put the work in and get good or accept that we’re not, or just do something else. I hear there are cheats for call of duty type things that people pay subscriptions for. I don’t get it.
But I’m not pissing on anyone else’s choices, plus like I say I’m way out of the loop on this. Thanks for sharing your experiences mate.
just finished bioshock, wow!
Fantastic series, I’m glad you liked it, because I sure did as well.
I’m sure you’re already loaded up with a backlog of recommendations and games you bought but haven’t yet touched. But I’d highly recommend FTL: Faster Than Light, as well as Into The Breach. They’re both from the same publisher, and are both amazing games that arguably are a defining feature of modern gaming.
I hear there are cheats for call of duty type things that people pay subscriptions for. I don’t get it.
Yeah, I’m right there with you. Could not care less about subscriptions, let alone for cheat subscriptions.
Thanks for sharing your experiences mate.
Of course. Enjoy whatever is next on your list!
Aside from it being code you don’t want on your machine
Code you don’t want on your machine, that have sometimes more permissions than you yourself have on your own files, is completely opaque, and have the legitimacy to keep constant outgoing network data that you can’t audit.
Yes, aside for that, no reason at all. No problem with a huge risk on your privacy for moderate results that don’t particularly benefit you in the long run.
(and all that is assuming that they’re not nefarious to begin with, which is almost impossible to prove)
If you play in Linux assuming this game even runs on Linux. Good chance they will ban you from running this game on that OS. They could allow it but most companies see Linux as a minority and will mostly willing to take the hit of blanket banning the whole OS. I guess Steamdecks would be out of question now. Another is security risk this kind of anti cheat tend to be invasive they have access to your kernel, the part of the OS that has access to everything on your system. If that thing is compromised good chance you’ll be affected also if you have that in your system. Think of something like crowdstrike issue.
Rockstar have already mentioned that they are working to get the game working on Steam Deck, and by extension Linux in general.
Shouldn’t be too hard since BattlEye is supposed to be compatible and there’s a BattlEye Proton runtime.
Yet they rolled this out before that comparability works, essentially updating out some people’s ownership of the game
Anticheats can be very invasive, they can theoretically scan all the files inside your computer (whether it is practically done, I don’t know but it surely feels like it’s been done), take screenshots regularly, send your hardware information, etc. So yeah, if you are someone who takes security seriously…
Yeah I get that. I don’t like foreign code on my machine. Trouble is, I dropped the ball with coding over twenty years ago and I kinda feel like the whole of windows is foreign code. I trust Linux more, but I don’t really understand it. I tend to assume that when I’m online my device is sending something I don’t want sent to some fucker I never even heard of. Insert shrug emoji
