Guilty Gear Strive hackers are abusing a new exploit that renders the game as completely unplayable for certain users. This new attack is causing widespread issues in the community, even threatening to upend tournaments.

Guilty Gear Strive is the latest entry in the long-running 2D fighting series which is incredibly popular in the e-sports scene. Guilty Gear is known for its beautiful art style, smooth animations, and cast of fan-favorite characters. The series always had relative popularity but with the release of Strive, the fanbase exploded making Strive the best and fastest-selling game in the franchise. This has also grown the competitive scene immensely with Strive making regular appearances at both the largest and smallest fighting games conventions.

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With such popularity, it's a rather uncomfortable idea that the game could be inaccessible due to behind-the-scenes vandalism. But such is the case right now with Guilty Gear Strive's online component and the issues that hackers are causing thanks to a system exploit called the R-Code. For those unaware, the R-Code is a function in GGST's online systems that stores players' names, win-loss ratios, and other critical data.

This isn't the first time R-Code has caused issues as a few years ago a small bug locked players out of online play due to R-Code miscommunication. This new instance however is much more sinister as what the hackers are doing is manipulating another player's R-Code to lock them out of the game. This could be as simple as changing the player's name mid-match which forces a system error or forcing the other player to flood the in-game chat box, slowing the game as it tries to keep up with the simultaneous commands and messages.

This has also affected the tournament scene as an exhibition of V-Tubers, which was originally scheduled for Jan 6, has been postponed for the foreseeable future. Many are concerned with how this will affect Frosty Faustings, which is a relatively large tournament scheduled for February 2. If the issues aren't resolved by then, it could lead to a rescheduling or cancelation of this year's tournament.

For the most part, the hacker or hackers seem to be centralized in Eastern Europe, based on the activity times of the hacks. They also seem to be specifically targeting community members with a following and have figured out how to exploit R-Code on consoles as well. For now, it seems players' best bet is to play the game in offline modes while developer Arc System Works looks into how to solve this issue.

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