Rockstar Updates GTA Online Community Guidelines to Promote 'Positive Gaming Experience' for Everyone

gamerant.com:

Rockstar Games has published a new set of community guidelines for Grand Theft Auto Online that aims to combat griefing and cheating while encouraging positive interactions between players. Grand Theft Auto Online users often encountered problems when interacting with the more toxic portions of its community.

GTA Online's impressive world has created a large base of players over the years, with the game regularly sitting near the top of the rankings for most-played games more than a decade after its release. Like many popular multiplayer games, GTA Online has also attracted its fair share of toxic players who intentionally target other community members. Seeing that this can cause users to completely give up on the game, Rockstar has decided to take more action on the matter.

As part of GTA Online's newest update on April 4, Rockstar unveiled its new set of community guidelines. The rules are intended to improve the player atmosphere in both GTA Online and Red Dead Online by clearly outlining what Rockstar perceives as punishable behavior, which will be followed by anything from a temporary suspension of certain features to a report to law enforcement. Rockstar presented the guidelines by breaking them up into three categories: fair play, respect, and safety. The fair play section explains that cheating (using exploits, hacks, or other third-party software) and griefing (intentionally annoying or interfering with another player by using the game in unintended ways) will lead to a loss of player privileges. The respect section outlines that any player-to-player harassment, attacks against a user's identity, or sharing of graphic content will also result in punishment.

The safety section of Rockstar's new community guidelines explains that encouraging violent extremism, illegal activity, suicide or self-harm, and other troublesome topics will similarly result in punishment. To ban or suspend these users, Rockstar encourages players to use in-game reporting tools or