On the 11th anniversary of GTA V’s release day, Rockstar Games has just added a new anti-cheat to GTA Online. It is ready to bring effective measures that stop cheaters in GTA Online. This will be a huge surprise for GTA Online players who have had to endure a decade of cheats.
Seriously, 9 years after GTA V was released on PC, Rockstar gave it a third party anti-cheat: BattlEye. Rockstar made some changes to their own anti-cheat as recently as last year. Now some problems should be harder to cause thanks to the addition of BattlEye.
Ever since GTA Online launched in 2013 for Xbox 360 and PS3, there have been cheaters. Since the Xbox One and PS4 release, cheaters on console have mostly been kept at bay. However, the PC version, which came out in 2015, suffered non-stop. From UFO spawning to incredibly harsh feats like getting your account banned, PC gamers have been targeted constantly.
What can BattlEye do?
If you haven’t heard of BattlEye before, you’ve heard of games that have used it for years. Popular multiplayer titles like Destiny 2, PUBG and Rainbow Six Siege have it in their arsenal. It brings a real barrier of protection to GTA Online.
Some cheats are cheap or even free and this will combat that. In addition, there is the ability to ban hardware. This means that cheaters who simply make new accounts to cheat may be completely banned from playing GTA Online on their computer’s components.
Cheating and hacking in games is an endless arms race. Lots of people pay money for mod menus and the like. There’s a lot of incentive for people to make tools that exploit holes in games’ defenses. While BattlEye won’t completely eliminate hackers from GTA Online, it will certainly cause a reduction and send some cheaters back to the drawing board.
New GTA Online update for it
To implement this new anti-cheat software, Rockstar Games released a new update for the PC version of GTA V. This means that 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 PC only.
Using BattlEye
After launching GTA V for the first time after downloading the aforementioned update, you will be prompted to install BattlEye. Follow the on-screen instructions as it asks you to accept and install. Once done, GTA V/GTA Online will start as normal.
If you would like to disable BattlEye from working in-game to play GTA V’s Story Mode, you can do so by visiting the Rockstar Games Launcher settings. There is a checkbox switch to enable or disable the new anti-cheat. You will need to do this to use single player mods. Trying to load into GTA Online with it disabled will give you an error.
For those wondering if this will affect the game on SteamDeck, BattlEye has support for Proton. However, it may be that each title with BattlEye may need specific support in order for it to work on SteamDeck without problems.
In other security news, FiveM saw some sneaky improvements last year. You can learn more about them here. Also earlier this year Rockstar Games launched a new AI-powered voice mode system on all platforms. For more information, visit our article.
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