Red Dead Online offers players the opportunity to take part in bank robberies, bounty hunting, and good old-fashioned shootouts. Virtual lawbreaking is all fun and games, but when hackers start using cheats, other than the cheats already in the game, that's when people start getting banned.
These hackers usually get suspended for using cheats like god mode and teleportation in Red Dead Online, but now their hacks are getting innocent players in trouble as well. Players who have never used a cheat are now getting suspended, and even permanently banned, due to a recent hack that spawns treasure chests in the game, making this another reason why the game may be worse than GTA Online.
The treasure chest spawner was first released on January 22nd, 2020, as part of an update to a mod menu created by Austrian hacker zJanny. Mod menus allow players to use cheats– like spawning violent two-headed skeletons to terrorize players– inside Red Dead Online, thus breaching the game's terms of service. When zJanny released the treasure chest spawner on a hacker's forum, they did leave a warning saying "IDK if detected or not," meaning they weren't sure if the cheat would be detected by Rockstar's anti-cheat software or not. Some hackers decided to use the cheat anyway, and around February 15th that's when they started reporting on the forum that they had been banned for using zJanny's cheat, and the number of bans have only increased since.
The Red Dead Online hackers are now speculating that maybe Rockstar already knew about the treasure chest spawner ahead of time and had started watching flagged players to see if they were using the cheat. One hacker wrote on the forums that they only used the cheat once on the very first day it came out and ended up making more than 1,000 gold and 100,000 cash. Then, after more than a month, they "finally got a ban notice. Sounds like they are looking over everyone's money now lol." zJanny claims that it's only the 3-in-1 treasure chest spawner that's being detected, but some hackers say that spawning just 1 reward per chest still got them banned.
Unfortunately, these bans aren't only targeting hackers. There were apparently many players who didn't realize the treasure chests were part of a cheat, and many players who opened the chests are now suffering the same consequences as these hackers. Rockstar also seems to be uncharacteristically uncaring towards these innocent players. Whereas in the past Rockstar would gift players free items, now they are ignoring player's attempts to explain their innocence. One player explained to IGN, "Myself and at least 4 others in the r/reddeadonline community have reported being wrongfully suspended by Rockstar and have had our characters reset." Despite their efforts to contact Rockstar, these players remain banned.
Red Dead Online is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia.
Source: IGN