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

https://kotaku.com/gta-online-update-removed-cars-full-list-paywall-gta-1850535019

by josephcsible • 3 years ago

68 47 3 years ago

kotaku.com

toyg• 3 years ago

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

crazygringo2• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

crazygringo2• 3 years 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_gril6• 3 years ago

Guess they should quit playing then.

motoxpro3• 3 years 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• 3 years 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

xboxnolifes• 3 years ago

They also changed the game people paid for by adding vehicles, but nobody is complaining about that here.

00kevn• 3 years ago

When I had cable they removed channels at the time. Usually because Viacom tried to strong arm them

kjs3• 3 years ago

What if your cable provider removed a bunch of channels you pay for, but haven’t watched yet, and turned them into PPV channels.

They have, at least for content if not entire channels (don't have MLB Package or NFL Sunday Ticket? Too bad...enjoy the blackout). So have the streaming services. I'm mildly upset by it, but they've made it clear my only alternative is 'FU...cancel if you don't like it'.

edit: spelling

letitbeirie• 3 years ago

What if your cable provider removed a bunch of channels you pay for, but haven’t watched yet

Isn't this about people getting upset over Rockstar removing cars they didn't pay for though?

KennyBlanken• 3 years 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...

Just google "GTA changes" and read for yourself all the complaints.

redroyal6• 3 years 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?

h4x0rr• 3 years ago

Have you ever played video games once?

PogoPuppy2• 3 years 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?

ehnto• 3 years ago

You don't get it, that is fine, you don't have to. I would like to correct you though, it's not real money. It's currency you earn in game by doing missions. You can supplement in game money with real money, but most people will be annoyed because in game currency represents time they spent doing missions, time they were hoping to trade for the cars. I can't help you understand why people enjoy it, but just like any hobby, it's enough that they do.

Though just a hobby, gaming is the biggest media industry on the planet, and GTA Online is one of the biggest single money makers in the industry. To the tune of billions of dollars, so it's not exactly a silly little niche, this change will likely shift the needle for them by millions of dollars, in which direction I don't know.

hinata083• 3 years ago

why would you drive cars in video games ?

I have little interrest in real life cars.

Real cars pollute much more, cost a lot, you have to take care of them, pay attention not to crash them, and you can kill innocent families with them

I don't habe the budget for a Lambo and modding a street car is illegal. And even if I could, I wouldn't have the interrest to spend a decade to build a racing car that I could just crash at any time.

I don't want a miata because I have bicycles and friends.

The plot around driving your own car is terrible. At least video games have a scenario

I can see myself doing a heist to have fun with friends in GTA, but not in real life

Why would anyone take their hard earned money and purchase the sprite of a car and drive it around a video game

More like why would anyone take their hard earned money and burn it at the petrol station, on sets of tires, and on endless mechaniscs.

A video game is 60$, a Miata is 20.000$

And I already cycle around, so I won't just pollute and waste money for the track day

scotty792• 3 years ago

Why? It doesn’t transport them anywhere so they’re paying money for no real world utility.

As a person who doesn't like to travel and drive I see virtually no utility in getting transported from one place to another in real world either.

7e• 3 years ago

Is this Hacker News, or Slashdot?

serf• 3 years 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• 3 years 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_gril6• 3 years ago

I don't care about Rockstar's decisions, but it's always interesting to hear about hacks and exploits in online games.

MWil• 3 years ago

https://jvwr-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/287/241

bluetidepro• 3 years ago

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

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

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