Exorcet, I would not mind if the hacked cars could not be used online. The guy in the link you provided lost his hacked game save and was asking for another. He couldn’t play online with his corrupted game save.
No, he had modified game files directly (equal to changing data on the GT5 disk) and was unable to play online with people who did not have the same mod.
Two of the major servers for that game did the same thing intentionally, and this made it so that players who wanted to join those servers had to mod their game (as I did). You were fully capable of playing online with mods, you just needed to be compatible with the server you were trying to enter.
There are universal rules. They're in the terms of service for PSN and they forbid any modifications of any part of a game, including save files.
Yes there is a ToS, but that's not a gameplay rule.
To avoid having to add a "no haxs"-suffix to every online lobby that doesn't want them, the default position should be that modded cars are cheating, unless the host says otherwise. If in doubt - ask.
Sounds reasonable to me, though this only covers online and would only cover online in certain rooms/with certain hosts. Simply modding a car is not cheating. Using a modded car to gain an advantage over another player when that advantage is forbidden by the rules set by whatever player(s) is in charge is cheating.
If the simple act of modding were cheating, then the entire game that I posted above was basically cheating when those two major servers changed the game files. That doesn't make sense.
Regarding technical solutions from PD or Sony to deal with modded cars, they need to find a way to detect them. That may be difficult, depending on how the game is constructed, and may require some fundamental changes in its architecture. In theory you just need a tool to compare the values of the car with the possible default values and detect anomalies. In reality that may be a complicated and lengthy process. Once they do have that tool they could chose to either add a "no hybrids" option to the game, to ban hybrid cars altogether, or to give that tool to Sony to detect and ban hybrid users.
It might be difficult, but it shouldn't be. Banning users with modded cars is also a bad idea because not everyone is going to know. Someone who just got the game for Christmas or something, has never played GT before, and maybe isn't too familiar with games might end up getting the car. There is nothing unreasonable about a 800 hp car, how would they know that it's been modified?
PD needs to do something, banning probably isn't it.
If I was PD, I would be rather annoyed if I had to spend months coming up with a fix to this - especially at a time where I would like to focus my resources on the next Gran Turismo (that may or may not come later this year) and in that position I would gladly hand the tools over to Sony to unleash the fury of the ban wave. Apart from fixing the problem of modded cars, it would also make future gamers have more respect (fear) for the rules so they wouldn't have to spend valuable time for things like this in the future. After all, if they go for the soft approach and just add an option to the game, people learn that it's okay to break the rules and what is there then to stop people from delving deeper into hacking PD's games?
That's a possibility. Another one is that PD doesn't care and won't do anything. Another is that PD adds the features to the game and then adds more security as well. I don't see how adding something to the game would imply in the slightest that breaking the ToS is OK. The ToS says it's not OK. Even then, banning or whatever hard approach won't do a thing to stop people with offline PS3's or alternate PSN's.
Cheating is cheating. I knew the definition as a child and still do. What I feel is irrelevant.
Exactly as I said. Cheating is cheating. Mods by themselves aren't. Can't really argue against that.
). See, it tops out at around 160mph, and people online magically couldn't give two hoots about me in my positively slow hybrid.
