Just in time for it to count as GTA 5’s 11th birthday present of sorts, GTA Online’s finally had anti-cheat software added to its notoriously teleporting deity-heavy PC version.
How are things going so far? Well, very chill, unless you’re one of the players that have ended up locked out due to the platform you’re using, unable to hop back into Los Santos as a distraction from all of that chatter about GTA 6 potentially catching a delay or not (as of right now, the answer to that looks to be a tentative no).
As revealed in the patch notes for this latest update to Online, the specific anti-cheat software that Rockstar’s added in is BattlEye, a name that’ll likely be familiar to folks who’ve played Destiny 2, Fortnite, or PUBG. If you only play story mode and don’t fancy having to run it, Rockstar’s also added the option disable the software, which can ban offenders on a hardware level (i.e, if you’re caught, your comnputer may well be rendered unable to fire up GTA Online), for single player.
The short term results of this, aside from some apparent FPS teething issues that don’t look to be universal, has been what I can only describe as a grinder or car meet fanatic’s wet dream. “So I played full one hour [plus] in a public lobby without taking ages to load in, [or to] step in and out of properties,” wrote one player, “No one teleported me to Cayo/LSIA/their apartment. No lags. Nothing. Just 27 guys creating mayhem in a public lobby. Even sold some business product in [a] public [server] after ages. Felt good. I am very happy.”
So for now at least, you can enjoy a bit of a paradise on Earth, provided you can avoid the regular griefers and that chgeaters don’t find a way around the software in double-quick time, as some players fear. Though, those using the Steam Deck or Linux can’t gain entry to that paradise, with BattlEye’s addition having locked them out of running GTA Online, since Rockstar looks not to have gotten the game on the list of titles with BattlEye anti-cheat that are playable on Deck via Steam’s Proton compatibility tool as of writing.
Frustrated players are submitting complaints to Rockstar’s customer support in the hopes of convincing the developer to do something about this at some point down the line, so we’ll have to see if it ends up issuing an update that allows GTA Online to work on Deck once more.
How do you feel about GTA Online finally having anti-cheat added to it? Let us know below!