Rockstar’s anti-modding measures downgrade GTA V’s PC performance

Man, PC gamers just can’t catch a break.

A couple of months ago, Reddit posts started popping up suggesting that players were being banned from GTA Online for the use of offline mods. Rockstar stepped in to deny these allegations, but took the opportunity to make their anti-cheating stance very clear. “Our primary focus is on protecting GTA Online against modifications that could give players an unfair advantage, disrupt gameplay, or cause griefing,” Rockstar explained.

Now, that’s the reasonable part. Here’s where they put their foot in their mouth.

It also bears mentioning that because game mods are by definition unauthorized, they may be broken by technical updates, cause instability, or affect your game in other unforeseen ways.

This cautionary tale of the consequences of modding is, ironically, a pretty apt description of what happened to GTA V after Rockstar launched Patch 1.28 ‒ an update designed to sabotage the use of online modifications. Following this patch, many users are reporting micro-stuttering, dropped frame rates, and reduced quality overall. 

According to the developers of the LCPD First Response Mod, Rockstar’s update introduces a load of unnecessary junk code, which makes navigating the code of GTA V more difficult. Not only that, it also quadruples the amount of time needed to execute script functions. What does this mean for you? An unnecessarily chuggy and buggy game.

To make matters worse, these issues are plaguing cheaters and non-cheaters alike, both in multiplayer and in singleplayer.

While most would prefer to play online without the interference of cheaters and hackers, this simple privilege shouldn’t come at the cost of the game’s performance.

Don’t use your shotgun on problems that can be solved with your knife.

As of yesterday, Rockstar is officially aware of the problem. “We have received reports of lower framerate in GTA V and GTA Online after Title Update 1.28 on PC, and we are looking into these reports now.” For more updates on the status of this issue, log in to Rockstar support and subscribe to the page linked above, and make sure to check back with GameSkinny for all things GTA V.