Last week was arguably the best deal for gamers as Epic and Rockstar Games teamed up to give away their 7-year old game Grand Theft Auto V free to keep for everyone.
At the time of the give away, everybody rushes to get a free copy of the game, but the event causes chaos to the servers of both Epic and Rockstar Games making their website unavailable for several hours. The swarm of players also makes the online multi-player version of the game, GTA Online even more popular to new players.
Because of the free game, there are influx of modders and hackers taking advantage of the event. Creating free accounts to overrun every lobby in GTA Online with unofficial mods and cheats to troll innocent player, ruining their experience with bunch of odd things like spawning planes, giant robots and even a burning toilet.
Kinulam or Kulam, a Tagalog word for sorcery or a witchcraft magic, that’s what players describe whenever his character suddenly respawns with weird object in GTA Online. A hacker mysteriously sticks a burning toilet around his character until being burned and wasted to death.
Posted on the Facebook group of GeForce Community Philippines, June Justine Hizole wrote “Bakit kaya naging ganito account ko sa GTA Online? May mangkukulam ba sa laro?” (Why is my account in GTA Online is like this? Is there any witchcraft in the game?).
Although not all modders are there to troll other players, there are also some harmless modders that provide lovely perks. In a reddit post, one whole lobby was put into a spectacular fireworks display after a modder gives everyone an RPG that fires fireworks. The mod made an entirely different moment after everyone fires their fireworks into the sky.
Mod and hacking is one of the major problems of Rockstar’s online games, although they do try to stop these modders from over running the game. In fact, they banned several accounts for these kinds of mod, whether harmless or not, making it harder for them to log on the official server.
But because of the free game, the situation got worse, they got a cheaper way to enter the game using any disposable account, nothing to lose if caught or banned. Although the giveaway for GTA V is already over, Rockstar Games may take months to get rid of these hackers from the game unless they develop a new anti-cheat engine.
Have you experience this kind of mods in GTA Online? Will the GTA Online become normal again? What is your weirdest ordeal?