Grand Theft Auto Online is wildly popular thanks to it's extensive customization and variety of ways to earn millions of dollars. Players can earn cash by collecting bounties on the heads of players, doing odd jobs for characters like Lester and Lamar, and even performing heists that can score you hundreds of thousands of dollars. A list of rumored/leaked future GTA Online updates even suggest that there will be a casino coming in the future to make more money! There are so many jobs for people to do but of course some people don't like putting in hard labor and prefer to cheat.
Ever since the dawn of GTA Online in October 2013, there have been so many cheaters. These cheaters use hacks and glitches to give them the upper hand in combat, unlock clothes and cars that are otherwise unavailable in GTA Online, and get incredible amounts of money so they can buy literally whatever their heart desires. Rockstar has been battling these cheaters for three years now. They ban players from the game, take down YouTube videos showing glitches, and much more to keep the game fair and balanced but it just doesn't work as well as they'd like it to.
Recently, Rockstar Games has decided to start pulling money from players who have obscene amounts of money and appear to be gaining large amounts in small amounts of time. Players who also find themselves suspended from GTA Online will also find all of their property, progress, and inventory completely wiped once their suspension is up. Rockstar issued a statement regarding the punishments via posts on their support page. "To keep the gameplay environment fair we have removed illegitimately gained in-game money from player accounts. If you received an alert saying that your shared bank balance was adjusted, that is because you had illegitimate funds in your account."
"If you are temporarily suspended from GTA Online, you will not be able to access GTA Online from the moment you are suspended. Your suspension expiration date is shown on the splash screen after being returned to Story Mode following an attempt to play GTA Online. In addition, your GTA Online character(s) will be reset. All GTA Online progress, property and inventory will be reset."
Rockstar promises any money bought via microtransactions will remain untouched but if you are suspended more than once, it will result in a permanent ban meaning all that money you bought will be basically useless.
Players have reported losses of billions and even trillions of dollars. One player lost exactly $117,944,768,843 within just one day, you can see an image below.
If you were affected by the loss (shame on you), you'll have the chance to gain a very small portion of it back by logging into GTA Online between now and the end of the month. Rockstar will be giving away $250,000 to every player who logs in during that time period to celebrate the third anniversary of GTA Online.
[Kotaku]
