Rockstar Offering Amnesty for Red Dead Cheaters

Look out cheaters, John Marston’s come to run you in.

When it comes to Red Dead Redemption are you a low-down, dirty, rotten cheater? Are you concerned that you may be wiped off the map when Rockstar swings the ban hammer in a few days to make room for all the law-abiding citizens of the world? If so then it’s not too late to come clean and save your gaming soul, as Rockstar is offering amnesty for those who clean up their act.

In order to be spared hackers must delete ALL single-player and multiplayer game saves they’ve used for the purposes of cheating. While you’ll still get to keep your Achievements/Trophies, Social Club cheats and any pre-order bonuses you may have purchased, everything else will be wiped away, meaning you’ll have to start your march to justice all over again. Still, it’s likely better than being perma-banned for refusing to follow the path of honor, and since Rockstar already knows whether or not you’ve been naughty it’s going to be pretty tough to escape the long arm of the law. Once you’ve deleted the save you’ll need to go online and play the single player until you reach MacFarlane’s Ranch and multiplayer until you clear one gang hideout or finish one match. At that point the servers will register a clean save and you’ll be spared the wrath of Rockstar.

Drop the cheats and back away slowly and he won’t shoot.

There is an important caveat, and that’s the fact that this banning/amnesty only applies to those who have been cheating consistently since the game launched. A little while back there was an exploit avaiable in the game which allowed anyone to grind XP and rank up quickly. The folks who took advantage of that bug before it was fixed will not be punished, only those who hacked the game or have otherwise been found to post impossible scores. Utilizing an exploit is merely a misdemeanor, and in this case Rockstar wants to go after the felons.

While everyone hates cheaters this seems like a pretty fair solution for all sides. While the hackers will grumble about losing all their stats and game progress they don’t really have a leg to stand on considering the manner in which they achieved their victory. We also applaud Rockstar for being proactive and getting rid of the bad apples so the rest of us can continue to enjoy this masterpiece of a game. Now it’s back to embedding tomahawks in friends’ skulls, that never gets old.