GTA Online: more glitches fixed and exploits closed

GTA Online: the well-known used car exploit is now gone

Good news for some, bad for others: Rockstar has issued a new downloadable patch for GTA Online, which fixes some issues but also solves a glitch that was allowing canny gamers to make millions by reselling the same car over and over again. The multiplayer persistent world adventure, which is free to owners of Grand Theft Auto V, has been beset by technical difficulties since its launch on 2 October, but the development team is slowly getting through its long 'to do' list of repair tasks.

Importantly, the publisher claims that problems with disappearing cars and customisations have now been fixed. Players were often finding their hard-earned (or carefully stolen) vehicles going missing, or would spend thousands on new upgrades, only to have those new pieces of kit mysteriously disappear. Now whole fleets can be safely stored in garages around the city.

And yes, the well-known used car exploit is now gone. Several YouTube videos appeared last week showing how to drive a car into a custom shop, sell it, and then tweak the menus to make it appear again – and naturally they were getting thousands of views. That rich-quick scheme is now at an end.

There are two other interesting additions. The character customisation system has been altered, "to make better-looking default characters with the 'random' option". Clearly there are too many ugly randoms strolling the streets of Los Santos. Furthermore, Rockstar has capped the cost of death in "Freemode"– ie the part of the game where you can just drive around the city streets meeting – and usually shooting – other players. Previously, an unsuccessful shootout could result in thousands of pounds of medical fees, but now the most you'll lose is $500.

This death tax reduction could take things in one of two ways: either the streets become more violent as players take greater risks in order to experience the thrill of totally random virtual urban violence, or they become more peaceful, as players learn to interact without immediately reaching for a submachine gun in the fear that they're about to get wasted. So far, my experiences suggest the former.