Red Dead Online hackers can’t spawn the KKK anymore, Rockstar says

Red Dead Online, Rockstar’s multiplayer portion of Red Dead Redemption 2, has historically struggled with wrangling hackers who can bend the game to their will. But recently, Rockstar has put a stop to a racist cheat that allowed players to take on the role of the Ku Klux Klan.

The KKK appear as an in-game white supremacist faction within the single-player portion of Red Dead Redemption 2. While they are not included in the MMO portion of the Wild West, players can still make these characters appear through the use of mod menus, cheating programs often used by hackers. These external programs allow players to simply pick models — which the community colloquially refers to as a type of “ped” — to bring into the multiplayer. Potential spawns range from alligators to trains. If it’s in the base game, there’s a good likelihood you can use it via these mod menus. Previously, it was possible for cheaters to select a KKK model through this method.

In the past few weeks, there have been increased reports of cheating attacks by community members who say flocks of hooded NPCs are terrorizing them, either in the form of NPCs, or posse groups who pretend to be KKK.

One report, pictured above, sees a player with a handful of KKK models stuck to their person. “Hackers just spawned KKK on me because my character is Asian,” the player said on Reddit.

Midway through June 2020, though, Rockstar issued a patch that addressed at least part of this issue. According to data miner Tez2, Red Dead Online no longer allows you to spawn KKK NPCs as it did before.

A Rockstar representative confirmed to Polygon that the game no longer allows for this racist cheat, but did not offer any additional comment in time for publication.

These racist dynamics in Red Dead Online have been true since as far back as 2019, when I reported that some users formed KKK-inspired clans to target anyone who might be playing as a Black cowboy. It’s still a problem in 2020, albeit in a different form.

The laser-like focus and timing on this racist cheating ability, in the face of dozens of potential “ped” cheats, is notable. In early June, Rockstar took down the servers for both GTA Online and Red Dead Online for two hours to honor the memory George Floyd, a Black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police. Rockstar joins a number of game developers and companies who have expressed varying amounts of support of Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality sentiments. Developers like Infinity Ward are also vowing to find better ways to filter in-game racist content.