‘Guilty Gear Strive’ streamers claim game is ‘unplayable’ due to hackers

by Arthur · January 6, 2023

Many Guilty Gear Strive streamers have said that the game is currently “unplayable” due to hackers exploiting a newly discovered exploit.

The bug currently allows hackers to remotely change the names of other players in the middle of a match, causing their games to crash (via Vice).

The hack uses a player’s unique ID (or R-code) which contains information about stats, activity and match history. As soon as one Guilty Gear Strive player appears online, they can be targeted by the hack. Despite the fact that many streamers try to hide their R code, it can easily be seen by all their followers in the game.

The exploit also reportedly allows hackers to push through chat messages that appear to come from the affected players. The recent addition of crossplay to Guilty Gear Strive meaning that both PC and console players can be targeted.

Guilty Gear Strive Pro Hotashi claims that hackers are now using the exploit to “cause the GGST client to have some sort of leak, which slows the game down to an unplayable crawl. This happens even in training mode, and does not happen with steam in offline mode,” they further wrote Twitter.

“I will be terminating Strive until the R-Code exploit is fixed. I would like more communication from Arc System Works on this as more and more streamers get hit,” added stream Remi Celeste.

I’m going to quit Strive until the R-Code exploit is fixed. I would like more communication from @ArcSystemWorksU about this as more and more streamers get hit (JP streamers included now). Could it be a blessing in disguise? Got burnt out…

— REMI CELESTE @ HOME 👽ALIEN VTUBER 👽 (@RemiCeleste) 2 January 2023

Despite weeks of reports of the latest R-Code hack, Arc System Works has yet to address the issue or release a fix. However, producer Zack Shini stepped in Twitter yesterday to confirm that he was “back in [the] office [and] looking through all the reports.”

While hacks are never fun, this one is Guilty Gear Strive comes at a particularly bad time since the qualifying period for Arc System Works’ major tournament is coming to an end. The last qualifying tournament for Guilty Gear Strive the event, which comes with a top prize of £166,000, takes place next month ahead of the main event in March.

In other news, atreamer MissMikkaa has finally defeated two versions of Fire Ring boss Malenia, during a challenge that sees her play the games simultaneously using different controls – one of which is a dance pad.