Now might be the best time for Rockstar to address the current issue of white supremacy groups running around in Red Dead Online. Okay, that might be a stretch; we don’t actually know if the hackers that have been messing with folks in the online cowboy “simulator” are actually members of a neo-Nazi organisation but that hasn’t stopped edgy blokes hacking models of the Klu Klux Klan into the game and harassing players just trying to get by and live a quiet life next to the campfire. Which is a pretty crappy thing to do, prompting Rockstar to ban all those mods that enable the models in the game.
Now, the Klu Klux Klan isn’t actually available in RDO because Rockstar obviously has some tact with their multiplayer offering. Yet the group does exist within the single-player content of the game, depicted as both very unsettling and also incredibly inept.
The fact that the models exist within Red Dead Redemption 2 has enabled modders to bring them over to the online component of the game, and reports from the Red Dead Online subreddit have made it clear that there’s been a recent uptick in KKK players, no doubt spurred on by the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the United States.
Rockstar confirmed to Polygon that the cheat has been addressed and has assured the community that players will no longer be able to don the attire of the KKK. Now maybe if they could go ahead and ban all those players who thought doing something like this would be funny, we could all rest a little easier.
Last Updated: June 17, 2020
konfab
June 17, 2020 at 12:24
People can LARP as a literal Nazi in plenty of WW2 multiplayer games, so I think the outrage is a little misplaced.
There were KKK in the era that the game is set in, so why not simply “allow” people to wear the getup via the cheat, but just attach serious penalties for doing it (so your character loses all XP and all their money). Like what other developers do when they detect people are using hacked copies of the game, or are cheating.
Original Heretic
June 17, 2020 at 14:45
The timing is an issue here, IMO.
While a country is burning itself to the ground, being ripped apart internally, people are doing this.
It’s a dick move of mammoth proportions.
konfab
June 17, 2020 at 14:54
So the random kkk encounters should be scrapped, but we will leave the part where you can feed innocent people to alligators in?
If this were another game, like animal crossing, you could sort of justify the outrage. But it a game like RDO, where almost anything goes, it is a bit silly.
Original Heretic
June 17, 2020 at 18:04
Ah man, I know nothing about this game, I haven’t played it at all.
All I’m saying is, considering the current sociopolitical climate, guys who intentionally hack the game code to play as characters who are infamous and notorious for their horrible racists acts (and the fact that there’s an upsurge of that in the game as reported in the article above), they’re being dicks.fpr doing it.
It may be a “anything goes” type of game, but the timing of this is off and obviously intentional as a reaction to current events.
Which only serves to propagate the cycle of hatred.
Original Heretic
June 17, 2020 at 14:45
The timing is an issue here, IMO.
While a country is burning itself to the ground, being ripped apart internally, people are doing this.
It’s a dick move of mammoth proportions.