Money glitches found by GTA Online players are often patched quickly, and if they remain active, the exploits don’t typically affect other players. A new exploit on the PS4, however, turns public lobbies into landfills for cheaters who dump massive structures onto the map.
The this exploit involves multiple logins and logouts, suspending the game, accepting invites, loading into different modes and more, all to force GTA V to load into GTA Online. Players take advantage of this vulnerability to place massive stunt track pieces around Los Santos, and these props will then go on to load in everyone else’s games.
These stunt pieces appear completely out of nowhere and are starting to pop up frequently in public lobbies on PS4. One player even had the “walls” pop up during a heist related mission.
All of this is done by cheaters so they can can “freeze” their money, which means they can buy as much as they want without depleting any cash. Freezing money also means that you can’t earn any more cash, so after players buy what they want they use a series of steps to unfreeze their cash. If done correctly, players can buy a dozen cars and planes, without losing a single penny.
Unlike the PC and PS3, PS4 GTA Online lobbies are free from mod menus, meaning that they don’t have the same kind of rampant cheating. Most players aren’t used to seeing random and massive props suddenly appearing, which is part of what is causing so much frustration.
Thankfully the exploit is still new and somewhat complex, so random stunt tracks aren’t happening in every lobby. The amount of players affected by this doesn’t seem large, but it’s still one of the most peculiar exploits in the PS4 version of GTA Online. Rockstar did not respond in time for publication.
Update 1/13 10:35PM: Rockstar Games reached out to Kotaku to say that this money exploit has been patched and should no longer appear on the PS4 version of GTA Online.
Zack Zwiezen is a a writer living in Kansas City, Missouri. He has written for Gamecritics, Killscreen and Entertainment Fuse.