Grand Theft Auto V finally launched on PC last Tuesday after much waiting, but it was certainly not without its issues. Install problems were preventing many gamers from playing at first, though many of those were addresses very quickly by Rockstar. The latest problem that cropped up came in the last few days, when some gamers claimed their accounts had been hacked and that Grand Theft Auto Online as a whole had been compromised, but Rockstar has now stepped in with a statement explaining just what happened.
The first reports came through a number of sources like the Rockstar forums, Reddit, and Twitter, where many gamers were complaining that they had been locked out of their Rockstar Social Club account and therefore made it impossible to play Grand Theft Auto Online any longer. One report even claimed that over 2,400 Grand Theft Auto Online accounts were compromised, but Rockstar released a statement to Kotaku explaining how it is something much simpler and less worrisome.
“As confirmed yesterday, the Rockstar Games Social Club has not been compromised. However, it appears that attempts have been made to access user accounts using email and password combinations from an unaffiliated, compromised website or database elsewhere on the internet. For the accounts affected, we are in the process of reverting those accounts back to their original owners. As a reminder, it is a good policy to ensure that the Rockstar Games Social Club account username and password is not shared across multiple websites on the internet”
It appears that the major issue is the lack of two-step verification by some with their accounts, allowing hackers to more easily get into accounts. The great news is that the Rockstar Social Club and Grand Theft Auto Online themselves were not compromised, but rather just accounts that did not secure their accounts well enough with strong passwords.
