On the 11th anniversary of GTA V’s release day, Rockstar Games have just added a new anti-cheat to GTA Online. It is set to bring effect measures that stop cheaters in GTA Online. This will be a huge surprise to GTA Online players who have had to endure a decade of cheaters. We also have the patch notes of today’s update below.
Seriously, 9 years after GTA V released on PC, Rockstar have given it a third-party anti-cheat: BattlEye. Rockstar have made some changes to their own anti-cheat as recent as last year. Now some issues should be harder to cause thanks to the addition of BattlEye.
Ever since GTA Online launched in 2013 for the Xbox 360 and PS3, there were cheaters. From the Xbox One and PS4 release, cheater on console have largely been kept at bay. However, the PC version which came out in 2015 has suffered non-stop. From UFO spawning to incredibly severe exploits such as banning your account, PC players have been targeted consistently.
What can BattlEye do?
If you have not heard of BattlEye before, you will have heard of games that have used it for years. Popular multiplayer titles such as Destiny 2, PUBG and Rainbow Six Siege have it in their arsenal. It brings an actual barrier of protection to GTA Online.
Some cheats are cheap or even free and this will combat that. Plus, there is the ability to hardware ban. This means cheaters who simply make new accounts to cheat can be banned from playing GTA Online on their PC’s components entirely.
Cheating and hacking in games is a never ending arms race. Many people pay money for mod menus and the like. There is a ton of incentive for people to make tools that exploit holes in defences of games. Whilst BattlEye won’t eliminate hackers from GTA Online completely, it will certainly cause a reduction and send some cheat makers back to the drawing board.
New GTA Online update for it
In order to implement this new anti-cheat software, Rockstar Games released a new update for the PC version of GTA V. That means all versions on PC so Steam, Rockstar Games Launcher and the Epic Games Store have a patch to download. It comes in at around 1GB in size. Consoles will not have an update as BattlEye is for PC only.
Using BattlEye
Upon launching GTA V for the first time after downloading the said update, you’ll be prompted to install BattlEye. Follow the onscreen instructions as it asks you to accept and install. Once done, GTA V/GTA Online will boot up like normal.
If you’d like to disable BattlEye from working in the game to play GTA V’s Story Mode, you can do so by visiting the Rockstar Games Launcher settings. There is a check box toggle to enable or disable the new anti-cheat. You’ll need to do this to use singleplayer mods. Attempting to load into GTA Online with it disabled will give you an error. If you use a 3rd party launcher, use the launch argument -nobattleye to disable BattlEye that way.
For those wondering if this will affect the game on Steam Deck, BattlEye does have support for Proton. However, Steam Deck does not support BattlEye for GTA Online as it is done a title by title basis. Rockstar say “You will be able to play GTAV Story Mode but unable to play GTA Online.”
Patch Notes
Rockstar Games have published the patch notes on their support site for the new GTA Online update. You can find them below:
General
- Integrated BattlEye Anti-Cheat for GTA Online
- An option has been added to the Rockstar Games Launcher to disable BattlEye Anti-Cheat for Story Mode play
- The launch argument -nobattleye has been added to disable BattlEye Anti-Cheat when needed on third-party launchers and Story Mode play
Fixes
- Fixed an issue that resulted in crashes while playing GTA Online
- Fixed an issue that resulted in players being unable to accept invites or join other players
In other security news, FiveM saw some ani-cheat improvements last year. You can learn more about them here. Also earlier this year Rockstar Games launched a new AI-powered voice moderation system on all platforms. For more information, visit our article.
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