GTA Online Fans Furious as 180+ Cars Are Removed, Some Now Paywalled | Hacker News Reader

GTA Online Fans Furious as 180+ Cars Are Removed, Some Now Paywalled

kotaku.com

68 pointsjosephcsible48 comments

The real story is that the only way Rockstar could combat their cheat-broken economy was by reducing the purchasing power of the money that had been generated effortlessly by cheat-engine and 'menu' users since the first day of release.

I never understood the idea of selling in-game currency in a game with such terribly weak book-keeping. It happens in MMO style games because someone is keeping their finger on the economy. Rockstar never once treated GTA Online that way.

There was a time (maybe still, I don't play the game) where cheats would cycle through every existing lobby and spawn millions of dollars into the inventory (or on top of physically) every character in the lobby.

Now I see that Rockstar is slowly pivoting from the cash sales into car sales -- gee, wonder why. Spawning cars is less common but still fairly easy; one imagines this is coordinate with work that would make spawning cars less easy -- but maybe that's too charitable here.

Sucks for the players that haven't cheated their way into owning EVERYTHING (which has been trivial for years and years just by being the random recipient of hacker money), and yet another boon for the cheaters who now find themselves with even more exclusive treasure.

Sounds like the early days of GTA SA-MP where you could just set your local money counter. Later on real-life server admins/coders had pretty decent anti cheat measures like server-side money counters and max speed heuristics (to avoid teleportation).

I don't care about Rockstar's decisions, but it's always interesting to hear about hacks and exploits in online games.

https://jvwr-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/287/241

Nothing that players own is being taken away:

> "...removes over 180 cars and motorcycles from in-game stores."

> "...making them nearly impossible to purchase and use if you don’t already happen to have them unlocked."

> "Yes, if you own one of these cars you can still drive it around and enjoy it."

> "...these vehicles will “occasionally be made available in other ways” citing the prize wheel..."

Is this really newsworthy? The options available for purchase have changed. I can see that might be mildly annoying, but it doesn't really seem like an HN topic.

> So is this really newsworthy? The options available for purchase have changed.

Yes. They changed the game you paid for by removing content. What if your cable provider removed a bunch of channels you pay for, but haven’t watched yet, and turned them into PPV channels. Would you be upset? I would.

They're also constantly changing the game you paid for by adding massive amounts of content. When you get GTA Online, you know it's an evolving experience.

It's not a static game you pay once for and then expect to remain the same.

(And I haven't subscribed to cable TV in a long time, but when I did, the channel lineup was absolutely in flux, with channels getting added and removed as time went on.)

Guess they should quit playing then.

Just seems like forced outrage.

They’ve added tons and tons more content than they’ve removed. Net-net you have more content than you bought.

Like adding 10 channels and then taking away the hallmark channel.

It'd be a ridiculous expectation for society to keep.

I've been paying for Netflix - this month they probably took off 20~30 movies due to licenses ending.

You're gonna say, hold on, I haven't had a chance to watch all those yet.

Or if I paid for the costco membership for a year and then they take some product off the shelf and I say - hold on I haven't had the opportunity to purchase that yet.

Nothing in our society works this way

Items from Costco don't work that way because there are a physical item. It has to be produced, can potentially spoil, and can take up a lot of space. Movies on Netflix get removed because of licenses, not because they can't be copied and stored trivially. If you can't see the difference between these then I think we'll have a hard time coming to an agreement here.

Also: it is entirely reasonable if I decided to cancel a Costco membership if they stopped carrying items I want. The same goes for Netflix, but they have less of an excuse from this perspective because as a consumer I don't care about licensing. At all.

yes, but we’re talking about video gamers who aren’t ruled by logic or reason. they’ll endlessly bitch about this and then rush to preorder the next thing.

They also changed the game people paid for by adding vehicles, but nobody is complaining about that here.

When I had cable they removed channels at the time. Usually because Viacom tried to strong arm them

What if your cable provider removed a bunch of channels you pay for, but haven’t watched yet, and turned them into PPV channels.

They have, at least for content if not entire channels (don't have MLB Package or NFL Sunday Ticket? Too bad...enjoy the blackout). So have the streaming services. I'm mildly upset by it, but they've made it clear my only alternative is 'FU...cancel if you don't like it'.

edit: spelling

> What if your cable provider removed a bunch of channels you pay for, but haven’t watched yet

Isn't this about people getting upset over Rockstar removing cars they didn't pay for though?

I know it may come as a giant surprise, but when a very large, very wealthy game studio has a PR problem and a leading game industry rag (literally, Kotaku was part of Gawker which was an entire network of shitty tabloid sites) publishes a story about it, things just might be downplayed?

Rockstar implemented a number of changes, including a "too hot to modify" mechanism that keeps you from modding (and thus making your own) cars you steal off the road.

In a game called Grand Theft Auto, you can no longer steal cars because they wanted more revenue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/149exbi/ao_about...

Just google "GTA changes" and read for yourself all the complaints.

I don’t agree this is incredibly strange. These people are upset that they are unable to drive virtual sports cars in an online world. Why? It doesn’t transport them anywhere so they’re paying money for no real world utility. What difference does it make what pretend car they’re driving in a video game? Why would they even want a choice of hundreds of different pretend cars? Why would anyone take their hard earned money and purchase the sprite of a car and drive it around a video game?

Have you ever played video games once?

Clearly not.

I've played plenty of video games, but these MMO ones have always seemed like more work than game. Especially if people are getting upset over it.

You are conveniently ignoring the part where a person gets happy over their character. Are you saying being happy has no real world utility?

“gets happy over their character”?

You mean their virtual character becomes happy because of the virtual sports car they now drive?

Tricking people to confuse their selves, possessions and lives with a simulation is some genius marketing. How did they pull this off?

The same way they “tricked” you to be happy about that book, movie, t-shirt, blog post, concert, hobby or any other form of entertainment you consume that “means nothing”

But you don’t even consume this. You can’t even give the experience to someone else to enjoy. They made up a fake person and gave a pretend product to them, and billed your bank account in real dollars. This doesn’t make a bit of sense to me

Why are you pretending not to understand this? In gaming you control an abstraction of a person and it's entertainment to you, the real world person. In passive drama you likewise watch events happen to imaginary people. Why do we have to explain this to you?

Because I want to see how you rationalize throwing the money you need to survive away on a fantasy

They don't need the money to survive, perhaps they have excess or they have deemed other things more important and allocated their resources accordingly.

You don't need to understand it, you don't even need to accept it for it to happen. You're discussing in bad faith.

Step back once more, look at your life and you’ll realise that you can apply the same logic to any status symbol you own.

How did they pull it off? It’s human nature…

It's a pretty short-lived happiness.

The game have been out for 10 years. If people are still passionate about it, that’s longer than most things people do in life.

It's an addiction like other MMOs. You grind sufficiently to where you don't feel much from gaining more (xp/money/whatever) but feel awful if you lose anything, or if you simply stop playing and let it go "to waste." These games are deliberately designed this way. You can spend 10 years on it without anywhere near a proportional amount of fun, and you won't gain anything lasting. Like, you wouldn't say a 10-year alcoholic is simply passionate about alcohol.

These games are deliberately designed this way

Which design elements can one add/remove to such game to make a difference? Asking because it feels like a stretch to make an argument and also just how all things naturally are (opposed to designed deliberately).

Some people will sink 15 hours a week into an MMO or other addictive game, and that's not even the extreme case (that's like 50h). It's hard to make that actually fun, so just focus on keeping the player coming back. If there's a genuinely fun part of the game, make sure it's slightly more fun when you grind for hours first. Ensure there's some kind of never-ending progress, often in the form of rare collectibles that are added over time to ensure nobody "beats" the game even if they've done everything that's fun in it. Along with customizations, this will make players feel like they lose something if they quit. Also make it seem like they're doing something productive with their time. Some games have a "daily tasks" checklist that makes it feel like a job. Or the simple version is a button you press once a day for free loot, just to get people to log in.

And most video games aren't like this. You'll see a contrast in how addictive games are monetized compared to others. The tactics have been well-known for a while (World of Warcraft pioneered many of them in 2004-06), and in the past decade it's become a lot more common. GTA Online isn't totally an addictive game, but it seems to have a bit of that with the ingame assets.

You don't get it, that is fine, you don't have to. I would like to correct you though, it's not real money. It's currency you earn in game by doing missions. You can supplement in game money with real money, but most people will be annoyed because in game currency represents time they spent doing missions, time they were hoping to trade for the cars. I can't help you understand why people enjoy it, but just like any hobby, it's enough that they do.

Though just a hobby, gaming is the biggest media industry on the planet, and GTA Online is one of the biggest single money makers in the industry. To the tune of billions of dollars, so it's not exactly a silly little niche, this change will likely shift the needle for them by millions of dollars, in which direction I don't know.

why would you drive cars in video games ?

I have little interrest in real life cars.

Real cars pollute much more, cost a lot, you have to take care of them, pay attention not to crash them, and you can kill innocent families with them

I don't habe the budget for a Lambo and modding a street car is illegal. And even if I could, I wouldn't have the interrest to spend a decade to build a racing car that I could just crash at any time.

I don't want a miata because I have bicycles and friends.

The plot around driving your own car is terrible. At least video games have a scenario

I can see myself doing a heist to have fun with friends in GTA, but not in real life

>Why would anyone take their hard earned money and purchase the sprite of a car and drive it around a video game

More like why would anyone take their hard earned money and burn it at the petrol station, on sets of tires, and on endless mechaniscs.

A video game is 60$, a Miata is 20.000$

And I already cycle around, so I won't just pollute and waste money for the track day

You’re still missing the point entirely. The purpose of a car is to take you from a to b. If you don’t need that service, you don’t need a car at all, and if you don’t need a car it’s doubly true you don’t need a virtual car even if it is cheaper. It’s not real they’re selling a fantasy. You’re trading a real burger for a photo of a burger. You can’t eat that.

The real world utility is spending time in pleasant manner. Virtual cars provide that exactly the same way as virtual anything.

> The purpose of a car is to take you from a to b. If you don’t need that service, you don’t need a car at all

It would take like 2 hours to walk across the GTA V map on foot north to south.

> and if you don’t need a car it’s doubly true you don’t need a virtual car even if it is cheaper

Wait, are you saying if I don't need a car in reality, I don't need a car in a game? I'm not the Hero of Time, so I guess I don't need any weapons when playing Zelda. I'm not a soldier, so I don't need guns in Battlefield.

You make an excellent point. Why are you playing video games at all?

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.

how dare you ?

>If you don’t need that service, you don’t need a car at all

You're repeating Marx's "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

that's socialism

> It’s not real they’re selling a fantasy.

and yes, that's capitalism

let me live in the 21st century of mass media and video games. I want that.

I want to fill my existential void with consumption and video games. They're fun.

Fantasy is a popular product for many reasons, especially for those who have inner fantasy response. Too bad you seem to completely lack one. Personally I’d fall into a heavy depression if the only thing I could enjoy about X was its physical property.

> Why? It doesn’t transport them anywhere so they’re paying money for no real world utility.

As a person who doesn't like to travel and drive I see virtually no utility in getting transported from one place to another in real world either.

Just another day in digital feudalism: you own nothing, peasant.

Is this Hacker News, or Slashdot?

This is also back from early June 2023. No clue why this fluff story is on the homepage of HN.

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