Hackers Use Vulnerability to Make ‘Guilty Gear Strive’ Game Unplayable Before Major Tournament

Hackers have been targeting streamers playing Guilty Gear Strive, a popular fighting title, crashing their game mid-stream and forcing the players to stop the game process from the task manager in Windows.

The gaming community faces the same problem as everybody else, with people trying to do harm just for the sake of it. Sometimes, people have ulterior motives, and plenty of times gamers have used all available tools, even illegal ones, to win matches.

One of the most common tactics in recent few years has been to hit adversaries with DDoS attacks, slowing down the internet connection. In fact, this was such a widely used tactic that an entire industry has surfaced on the dark net, offering these types of "products" to anyone willing to use them.

Now, Guilty Gear Strive players face a different type of threat. Streamers playing the game have been facing a significant problem since Christmas 2022 as attackers use a known exploit that lets them change the name of players, prompting the game to crash.

According to a Vice report citing a pro gamer, it's a more complicated situation, which doesn't happen when playing with Steam offline.

"Whoever is using this r-code exploit can now use this vulnerability to cause the GGST client to have some sort of leak, slowing the game to an unplayable crawl; this occurs even in training mode, and doesn't happen with steam in offline mode," said @hotashis on Twitter.

The game's developer, Arc System Works, has yet to release a patch. Moreover, a tournament with a $200,000 prize is scheduled for Feb. 2, so this wave of problems might not be a coincidence.