Grand Theft Auto Online Temporarily Removes Content Due to Vulnerability

Some Grand Theft Auto Online players are currently unable to pull off casino heists, as that feature has been disabled by the development team due to an unspecified “vulnerability” that is being addressed in order to protect players. The issue only appears to be affecting the PC version of Grand Theft Auto Online, so console versions of the game should remain unaffected.

Grand Theft Auto Online added a heist at the Diamond Casino to its variety of activities in December 2019. At that time, it was an ambitious move, providing a mission filled with a lot of different variables designed to keep players constantly on their toes to adapt to all possible outcomes.

Announcement of the feature’s shutdown was made via the game’s official Twitter account on July 13. According to the support page on Rockstar’s website, PC players will not be able to access Grand Theft Auto Online‘s casino heists until the developers have been able to permanently fix the unspecified problem. Casino heists are launched from the arcade property, providing that players own one, but for the time being, players on PC who don’t already own the arcade will be unable to purchase it, and those who do will not be able to set up casino heist or arcade setup missions until the issue is fixed. The last major security issue to hit the game occurred in January 2023, when a GTA Online hack was corrupting PC players’ data, altering their stats, and reportedly even providing backend access into other data stored on their computers.

GTA Online Casino Heists Haven’t Always Gone Smoothly

This unspecified threat isn’t the first time that the game’s casino heists have run into unintended problems. Nearly a year after the feature’s launch, some players were still reporting a bug in Grand Theft Auto Online casino heists that let players disable the mission timer by having two players attempt to drill into the casino’s vault simultaneously, resulting in a drastic reduction in difficulty and letting players rack up big payouts without having to race the clock.

Rockstar has not released a timetable for when developers expect to have this issue resolved. In the meantime, the development team is hard at work on the GTA Online summer update, which will bring a lot of new features to the game, including setting up a bounty hunting business, adding story missions centered on Vincent Effenburger, and giving players the ability to plan out custom drag and drift races in the content creator.

Grand Theft Auto Online

Released

October 1, 2013

Developer(s)

Rockstar North

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol

Number of Players

1-8 (Online Co-Op); 1-30 (Multiplayer)

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