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

68 points by josephcsible 3y ago

CppPro 3y ago
[flagged]
- scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
  Yeah but… are you fast as well?
toyg 3y ago
Just another day in digital feudalism: you own nothing, peasant.
Lolaccount 3y ago
[flagged]
crazygringo 3y ago
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.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  > 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.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    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.)
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Guess they should quit playing then.
  - motoxpro 3y ago
    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.
  - gretch 3y ago
    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
    - earthling8118 3y ago
      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.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  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_these_changes_it_isnt_gta_anymore/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/149exbi/ao_about... Just google "GTA changes" and read for yourself all the complaints.
- redroyal 3y ago
  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?
  - PogoPuppy 3y ago
    You are conveniently ignoring the part where a person gets happy over their character. Are you saying being happy has no real world utility?
    - redroyal 3y ago
      “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?
      - motoxpro 3y ago
        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”
        redroyal 3y ago
        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
        add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
7e 3y ago
Is this Hacker News, or Slashdot?
serf 3y ago
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.
- WanderPanda 3y ago
  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).
- hot_gril 3y ago
  I don't care about Rockstar's decisions, but it's always interesting to hear about hacks and exploits in online games.
  - MWil 3y ago
    https://jvwr-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/287/241 https://jvwr-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/287/241
bluetidepro 3y ago
This is also back from early June 2023. No clue why this fluff story is on the homepage of HN.

68 points by josephcsible 3y ago

CppPro 3y ago

[flagged]

scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
Yeah but… are you fast as well?

toyg 3y ago

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

Lolaccount 3y ago

[flagged]

crazygringo 3y ago

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.

donmcronald 3y ago
> 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.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  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.)
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Guess they should quit playing then.
- motoxpro 3y ago
  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.
- gretch 3y ago
  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
  - earthling8118 3y ago
    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.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
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_these_changes_it_isnt_gta_anymore/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/149exbi/ao_about... Just google "GTA changes" and read for yourself all the complaints.
redroyal 3y ago
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?
- PogoPuppy 3y ago
  You are conveniently ignoring the part where a person gets happy over their character. Are you saying being happy has no real world utility?
  - redroyal 3y ago
    “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?
    - motoxpro 3y ago
      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”
      - redroyal 3y ago
        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
        add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

7e 3y ago

Is this Hacker News, or Slashdot?

serf 3y ago

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.

WanderPanda 3y ago
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).
hot_gril 3y ago
I don't care about Rockstar's decisions, but it's always interesting to hear about hacks and exploits in online games.
- MWil 3y ago
  https://jvwr-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/287/241 https://jvwr-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/287/241

bluetidepro 3y ago

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