Take-Two Interactive obtained a search warrant to search the homes and computers of alleged "cheat developers"

[Amazonsucks]

"but upon probable cause". If they met that criterion then the 4th Ammendment still wouldnt protect them from getting busted for selling hacks.

 

Itd be like saying "well we cant go after this malware developer because he commits his crimes using a computer!" 

 

This cheat developer should do what G2A does to avoid getting busted: operate out of Hong Kong. G2A has been laundering millions of dollars in stolen credit cards for years and they cant be shut down since they are run out of HK.

 

 

[Blackie Sheen]

The title is a bit sensationalist. It should say ''Cheat developers'' instead of cheaters.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, DragonTamer1 said:

I think this is unbelievably stupid. I doubt this has anything to do with "player enjoyment" and has more to do with hackers handing out money that causes players to not spend real money on shark cards which at this point most likely makes up the majority of GTA5's revinue. Gatta make these new DLCs too fucking expensive to get it by just playing the game.

 

They are already known for banning people and resetting their accounts simply because players have "too much money.

 

Most of the hackers I've seen are pretty chill and just want to make the game more interesting for people that may be burned out.

 

Even if these people never made a single microtransaction, Take Two could still point to monetary damages.  Online cheaters not only ruin the game for people who've already bought copies, it discourages new customers from buying.  Why would you play GTA Online if you know there's a good chance you'll run into a hacker who wrecks the experience?

 

And remember, this is not about modding purely for solo enjoyment.  This is about giving modders an unfair advantage at the expense of everyone else.  I never agreed to play against someone who can kill everyone instantly, or has infinite cash; and I shouldn't be forced to go to a private session (and thus lose a major aspect of the game) just to avoid the cheaters.  If you profit from the misery of thousands or millions of gamers and damage a company's sales in the process, you completely deserve legal punishment.

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

This is fucking retarded. Im sorry but if you support jail or raiding cheaters you are moronic. Imagine police raiding some dudes house because he was caught cheating in a park in chess. 

 

Its a fucking game and you can control who you play with. 

If by cheating in the park said cheating caused the loss of revenue whilst making money themselves, then yes I would expect that.

 

But I should also point out, the jail time is only if they don't comply with the search requests and it's not raiding like in the movies, the sheriff knocks on your door with lawyers, independent lawyers and independent IT specialists to look through your computers and remove any that contain evidence.  They don't smash things open.  And most importantly, if they are found innocent by a court or it doesn't go to court,  they get to sue the arse of take two for everything. 

 

That is the gamble take two take when they request a search warrant and make claims against individuals/companies.

[Raspi454]

9 hours ago, Blackie Sheen said:

The title is a bit sensationalist. It should say ''Cheat developers'' instead of cheaters.

done

 

[williamcll]

Did rockstar ever unban people that got their money amount modified by other players through cheats?

[Paranoid Kami]

23 hours ago, BuckGup said:

But what if the mod was for off line use

Nobody cares about single player cheats. It doesn't affect others so it's fine.

[BuckGup]

20 minutes ago, Paranoid Kami said:

Nobody cares about single player cheats. It doesn't affect others so it's fine.

Yeah the mod menu could be made for GTA V offline mode and someone uses it for online mode

[BuckGup]

11 hours ago, williamcll said:

Did rockstar ever unban people that got their money amount modified by other players through cheats?

Yeah 

[Misanthrope]

I wonder how much all of this is going to cost them.

 

Also: I wonder if it's less than what it would have costed to use the extra year it took them to release the PC version to actually come up with dedicated servers instead of p2p since let's be honest here: releasing an mmo-style (just not the "massive" part) online game that is peer 2 peer is kinda asking for all of this issues: game just cannot be secured no matter how many raids they manage to get.

[TacoSenpai]

Damn the open up FBI meme is becoming real...

[Misanthrope]

20 hours ago, mr moose said:

If by cheating in the park said cheating caused the loss of revenue whilst making money themselves, then yes I would expect that.

 

But I should also point out, the jail time is only if they don't comply with the search requests and it's not raiding like in the movies, the sheriff knocks on your door with lawyers, independent lawyers and independent IT specialists to look through your computers and remove any that contain evidence.  They don't smash things open.  And most importantly, if they are found innocent by a court or it doesn't go to court,  they get to sue the arse of take two for everything. 

 

That is the gamble take two take when they request a search warrant and make claims against individuals/companies.

Except doesn't impacts those sales directly, well, not exactly. You see GTA Online you can technically get everything in the game with just regular gameplay, the microtransactions (Although there is nothing "micro" about 30 to 60 bucks for the only shark cards that might actually get you enough money to buy decent stuff nowadays) only serve to circumvent regular gameplay and bypass a lot of the grinding.

 

So if the cheaters were able to create say, exclusive for-sale-only content like in the case of some cosmetics for others free to play games then I say that'd be a pretty clear cut case of "Your cheating is actually costing me fucking money here"

 

But in the case of the cheating done by GTA:O Hackers, the "cheating" is basically only a shortcut for the really lazy: Most of the PvP combat boils down to "Do you have enough money to buy the best vehicle out right now?" which is the Oppressor Mark II. Most of the other game stats and a large portion of the actual skill to use the game mechanics doesn't matter, I mean it does but only so far as in being able to not immediately die against the aforementioned flying bike with ultra accurate heat-seeking rockets. To actually compete you need your own magical flying bike too.

 

So the laziest way to get that vehicle (That requires a second vehicle and that in turn requires an expensive property so there's 3 layers of paywall here, not cheap at all) is to just get it with a hacking tool

 

But the second, almost-as-easy way to get the money is through the numerous car duplication glitches Rockstar can't keep up with: Basically you take a really expensive vehicle (Favorite is Deluxo for example) and use certain glitches to create many copies and store them on your personal garages (You can store like over 100 cars by my latest count) and sell them veeeeery slowly. Like slow enough that Rockstar cannot reliably detect you are just selling illegally duplicated cars.

 

So if you know about this game then you basically uncover another layer of well, fucking stupid by Rockstar: The main source of income for most people, including almost all console players, is still not through legitimate play even if hacks and mods are not available, it's previously exploited duplication glitches that Rockstar patched but never bothered to go through player's inventories and remove the very obvious cheaters from the game i.e. You didn't really spend 450 million of in game currency (Something it would take a dedicated gamer between 1 and 2 years to grind legitimately) on 100 copies of the exact same car with absolutely no differences between any of them, and that we can show with a single query you've been consistently selling without actually spending the money on them to buy em first.

[FunkmastaFlex]

Kids playing Contra on a Sunday night:

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start

 

Australian Government:

[Stefan Payne]

For Online Multiplayer games: Good, more Companys should do that.

For Offline Single Player Cheats: No, because it doesn't hurt anyone..

[Yoinkerman]

Can't have the most profitable game ever make immeasurably less money now can we

[Phentos]

I'm all for hard liner approaches being taken against people who develop and sell cheats, but this is a tad draconian. Just a tad.

 

Lawsuits with default judgments being awarded if the defendant doesn't show up is good enough imo. 

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Except doesn't impacts those sales directly, well, not exactly. You see GTA Online you can technically get everything in the game with just regular gameplay, the microtransactions (Although there is nothing "micro" about 30 to 60 bucks for the only shark cards that might actually get you enough money to buy decent stuff nowadays) only serve to circumvent regular gameplay and bypass a lot of the grinding.

 

So if the cheaters were able to create say, exclusive for-sale-only content like in the case of some cosmetics for others free to play games then I say that'd be a pretty clear cut case of "Your cheating is actually costing me fucking money here"

 

But in the case of the cheating done by GTA:O Hackers, the "cheating" is basically only a shortcut for the really lazy: Most of the PvP combat boils down to "Do you have enough money to buy the best vehicle out right now?" which is the Oppressor Mark II. Most of the other game stats and a large portion of the actual skill to use the game mechanics doesn't matter, I mean it does but only so far as in being able to not immediately die against the aforementioned flying bike with ultra accurate heat-seeking rockets. To actually compete you need your own magical flying bike too.

 

So the laziest way to get that vehicle (That requires a second vehicle and that in turn requires an expensive property so there's 3 layers of paywall here, not cheap at all) is to just get it with a hacking tool

 

But the second, almost-as-easy way to get the money is through the numerous car duplication glitches Rockstar can't keep up with: Basically you take a really expensive vehicle (Favorite is Deluxo for example) and use certain glitches to create many copies and store them on your personal garages (You can store like over 100 cars by my latest count) and sell them veeeeery slowly. Like slow enough that Rockstar cannot reliably detect you are just selling illegally duplicated cars.

 

So if you know about this game then you basically uncover another layer of well, fucking stupid by Rockstar: The main source of income for most people, including almost all console players, is still not through legitimate play even if hacks and mods are not available, it's previously exploited duplication glitches that Rockstar patched but never bothered to go through player's inventories and remove the very obvious cheaters from the game i.e. You didn't really spend 450 million of in game currency (Something it would take a dedicated gamer between 1 and 2 years to grind legitimately) on 100 copies of the exact same car with absolutely no differences between any of them, and that we can show with a single query you've been consistently selling without actually spending the money on them to buy em first.

I really don't know what your are trying to argue here.     You claim the cheating doesn't really effect the revenue of the game,  then you claim pvp combat boils down to having enough money to buy the best.  So if cheaters are charging and giving players the best out of the box, doesn't that mean people will be playing it for less time and buying less in game?

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I really don't know what your are trying to argue here.     You claim the cheating doesn't really effect the revenue of the game,  then you claim pvp combat boils down to having enough money to buy the best.  So if cheaters are charging and giving players the best out of the box, doesn't that mean people will be playing it for less time and buying less in game?

Well I wasn't trying to argue first of all.

 

But overall my point (before I got sidetracked in a confusing rant, sorry about that) is that if an item is available both with in game resources and outside purchases, it is a bit of a grey area to establish damages and such.

 

Like the guys making these tools are probably screwed anyway because they sell them with the explicit purpose of profiting out of breaking someone else's game rules but besides getting them to take em down, getting them punished (as in, monetarily) gets a bit more murky if cheaters can argue 'Hey we don't sell shark cards we just sell something that might or might not diminish their inherent value for Rockstar customers and that's neither here nor there to assess responsibility (again, as in monetary)"

 

So I was more like trying to guess as what a defense lawyer for these guys might argue.

[mr moose]

12 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Well I wasn't trying to argue first of all.

Sorry, I use the term argument more in terms of a "set of reasons" as opposed to the more colloquial "heated debate"

12 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

 

But overall my point (before I got sidetracked in a confusing rant, sorry about that) is that if an item is available both with in game resources and outside purchases, it is a bit of a grey area to establish damages and such.

Ah, yes.  I would argue take two can point to legitimate revenue losses, in fact they would have given they obtained a search warrant.

 

12 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

 

Like the guys making these tools are probably screwed anyway because they sell them with the explicit purpose of profiting out of breaking someone else's game rules but besides getting them to take em down, getting them punished (as in, monetarily) gets a bit more murky if cheaters can argue 'Hey we don't sell shark cards we just sell something that might or might not diminish their inherent value for Rockstar customers and that's neither here nor there to assess responsibility (again, as in monetary)"

 

So I was more like trying to guess as what a defense lawyer for these guys might argue.

Fair enough.  It will be interesting to see how it turns out.   I would be more surprised if the guys who created the cheats still had any evidence on their computers.  After making money, the first thing I'd do is shift all the evidence of any thing personal and hide it.

[Jito463]

On 10/18/2018 at 12:33 PM, Amazonsucks said:

his cheat developer should do what G2A does to avoid getting busted: operate out of Hong Kong. G2A has been laundering millions of dollars in stolen credit cards for years and they cant be shut down since they are run out of HK.

Actually, they could be shut down fairly easily, if the US government wanted to do so.  All international internet access to the US is controlled through a mere handful (6 or 7?) of routing stations.  Simply block their IP/website at those stations, and no more G2A in the US.

[Amazonsucks]

2 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Actually, they could be shut down fairly easily, if the US government wanted to do so.  All international internet access to the US is controlled through a mere handful (6 or 7?) of routing stations.  Simply block their IP/website at those stations, and no more G2A in the US.

There would have to be a conviction for them to even bother trying to block the site. Thats kind of impossible since they're in HK and are basically untouchable to an investigation by US authorities. On the surface G2A doesn't seem to do anything other than facilitate selling keys, but if you barely scratch the surface(i've dug deep) they are obviously profiting immensely from laundering carded money. Its a pretty well established fact despite G2As attempts to make their business look legit.

 

 

[Jito463]

27 minutes ago, Amazonsucks said:

There would have to be a conviction for them to even bother trying to block the site.

I never said that they would do it, just that it could be done.  You said that they can't be shut down because they're in HK, I was simply pointing out that technically it is possible (at least within the borders of the US and/or other countries that wished to block it).  Mind you, anyone could get around that by using a VPN, but then they wouldn't have a recourse to complain if they got scammed and lost money.

[Amazonsucks]

3 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I never said that they would do it, just that it could be done.  You said that they can't be shut down because they're in HK, I was simply pointing out that technically it is possible (at least within the borders of the US and/or other countries that wished to block it).  Mind you, anyone could get around that by using a VPN, but then they wouldn't have a recourse to complain if they got scammed and lost money.

Customers dont usually get scammed on G2A. Its the fact tgzt theyre buying goods purchased with stolen credit cards thats the real issue. The game devs get hurt the most.

[TetraSky]

I can't even be bothered with GTA Online in the first place. I just want to have fun, but it's such a chore having to rank up to get access to better/cool stuff...

 

Really wish they'd just stop going after every "hacker" out there and just give us private servers with that crap enabled by default. But I know they won't, because Shark cards.

[Sauron]

I'm glad I never bought GTA V, I didn't do it at first because the double release rubbed me the wrong way and I've only gotten more reasons to stand by my decision as time went by.