GTA Online has an undeniable issue with cheaters, but Rockstar’s latest effort to combat the problem may be going a bit too far. Since the launch of the big Southern San Andreas Super Sport Series update, a significant number of GTA Online players on Reddit and other forums are reporting that they’ve been banned for 30 days and had their profiles wiped for seemingly no reason. This issue only affects the PC version of the game – console players seem to be in the clear.
Of course, pretty much everybody who gets banned, legitimately or not, insist they’re innocent, but there is reason to believe something weird is going on here. Hundreds are reporting false bans on Reddit, some of which have played less than 10 hours of the game (not usually the profile of a cheater). One Redditor using Rockstar’s anti-cheat software in combination with their own found the game was identifying almost everybody in most lobbies as modders. There has also been a sharp spike in negative GTA Online Steam reviews over the past few days, most of which cite the ban issue.
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So, what’s the cause of the problem? It’s impossible to say at this point, but it seems some of the new tunables introduced in the Super Sport Series update might be being automatically flagged as illegal mods, even if players haven’t touched them. For those unfamiliar with modding, tunables are bits of code that can be easily altered with an editor to mess around with a game.
Rockstar has yet to officially address the GTA Online ban issue, but those reporting false bans are now being told the publisher is “aware of and are looking into the issue,” so hopefully a fix is quietly in the works (a small tunables update was released on Sunday).
Have you been unfairly banned from GTA Online? You can submit a ticket to Rockstar support right here. Don’t expect an immediate unbanning, but hey, maybe your complaint will motivate Rockstar to get on top of things a little bit faster.
