Rockstar is completing its recent massive crackdown on the use of hacks in GTA Online. After implementing an extremely effective anti-hacking system in Online cleaning out the lobbies on PC, making public lobbies free of malicious hackers, scripters and modders, they are now targeting the YouTube accounts of the hackers.
Initially many thought that this is simply a typical ban-wave, from which the hacker population recovers within a week. However, those players who know members of the GTA Online hacking community and some (now former) hackers themselves have reported that this is a different case altogether.
It seems that the guys over at Rockstar have devised a permanent fix to the hacker issue by not simply making hacking difficult like in the past, but by making script injection outright impossible. While no such thing as "unhackable" exists, it takes far longer to devise a whole new way of hacking that it does to simply find workarounds to preventative measures.
Now that instead of "blocking the bridge", Rockstar has decided to bomb it, hackers will be a rare sight on PC, if a sight at all. However, Rockstar wants to make sure that the chances of a new hacking exploit be found are minimal.
Their first order of business is decreasing the publicity of hacks. How? By placing take-down orders on YouTube videos on the subject. Several channels that have been known to publish videos about cheating in GTA Online, as well as how to do it have been taken down.
These videos not only encourage the use of cheats and hacks in GTA Online, but also usually link to sites selling paid mod menus for the game, which were the main source of the script-kiddies in the game.
The way YouTube's system works, channels hit with three or more copyright takedown notices are banned entirely, making all content uploaded to the channel unavailable. Granted, these claims can be refuted with proper evidence, however lacking that, hack video channels will stay down.
Since this is the internet, some of the people operating these hack channels are actually upset that this happened...
Oh, we're sorry, the fact that you decided to record yourself violating pretty much every TOS and EULA associated with both GTA 5 and YouTube caught up with you and is now biting you in the ass? Excuse us while we celebrate the event!
Operators of some of the channels taken down have taken to social media, notably Twitter, to express their dissatisfaction with not being treated as exceptions from the rules. Most people had a reaction to this similar to ours, i.e. telling the whining hackers to suck it.
Rockstar finally stepping on some toes feels just as gratifying as we imagined. Not only are the streets of GTA Online being swiped clean of hacker filth, but they're sad attempts at gaining publicity are also being picked off. Since the "transfer-glitchers" are very rare on PC, it has now become the safest platform in terms of hackers.
How are you enjoying the hack-free experience of GTA Online?
