GTA Online has lately become a haven for hackers and modders as legitimate players are unexpectedly getting banned for no fault of theirs. Renowned YouTuber MrBossFTW (aka Ross) sheds more light on the ensuing fiasco as prankish modders are getting thousands of unsuspecting players banned in the immensely-popular online game.
Some of the most infuriating pranks unleashed by modders include blowing up all the cars in the lobby, spawning a whole bunch of crazy objects and dropping a heap load of money in the way of an unsuspecting player as he wanders around the game world.
Although some of the mods used by hackers are completely harmless, it all boils down to either fun or frustration, depending upon the type of modder you encounter in GTA Online.
According to a recent post by Reddit user 'CyborgWarrior', modders can now set your in-game rank to 250 if you are lower, without your consent. The same user has also posted an image (see below) depicting the tampered rankings of around 28 players who had logged into a public lobby in GTA Online.
In another similar post on Reddit, a user has revealed that one of his friends playing in his lobby was promoted from rank level 78 to 250 while a lot of other people faced a similar feat at the same time. It is further reported that modders are now targeting all players whose rank is below level 100.
Consequently, all such tampered or hacked user accounts in GTA Online will invariably face Rockstar Games' ban-hammer as the game developer deems that these players could actually be cheating or using mods to get higher rankings in the game.
It is not yet known if the unexpected bans are limited to a particular gaming platform (PC, Xbox One or PS4), although the PC users are usually more vulnerable to online hacks and mod tools.
In one instance, the insurance fraud bug has been troubling innocent players as modders are reportedly blowing up random cars and landing compromised user accounts into the Bad Sports pool. In order to combat this threat, Rockstar has removed the Insurance Premium that needs to be paid by a player for blowing up a co-player's car in the same lobby.
At the moment, Rockstar does not seem to have an answer for this problem as it is virtually impossible to stop players from ranking up or gaining Reputation Points (RP) in the game. In other words, there seems no way of stopping modders or hackers from using illegal tools to promote a random player's rankings in the game.
As the player ranking change caused by modders is permanent, it actually cannot be reversed without deleting the concerned user account. However, Rockstar seems to have found a way to reset your account back to your original rank without imposing a ban or account deletion.
On the downside, you will be losing all in-game progress and cash that was earned after your rank was unfairly promoted to level 250. So, if you can live with a small compromise, you could actually escape Rockstar's ban-hammer by just playing legit.
