Gran Turismo Officially Acts Against Wallriding Exploit

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A bit more than 2 weeks ago, top esports Gran Turismo players raised concerns over an exploit that could be used to gain an advantage in the second round of GTWS Manufacturers Cup season 2, hosted on August 20 at the iconic fictional High Speed Ring track.

The exploit allowed people to go flatout in T2, wallriding without getting penalized for it by getting bumped by another car before the corner, to trick the penalty system by thinking it was accidental. Despite the public warnings of renown personalities of the Gran Turismo community, the event still went as initially planned, which triggered various approaches in different regions.

For context, the Manufacturers Cup is divided into 3 regions : Asia/Oceania, EMEA (Europe/Middle East/Africa) and Americas, who race one after the other in that order. Standings are separated into 3 leagues according to driver ratings at the start of the season, with only the top GT1 league being able to qualify for special online and live events. Following the race and various reports, Polyphony Digital reactively changed the combo for a following race, and implemented a significantly increased damage sensitivity for contacts with walls in the 1.20 update.

It appears they have now reviewed GT1 splits and decided to penalize players who used this exploit by settings their individual points to 0 for this round. Additionally, that round is now being excluded from the constructors standings, but only in the Asia/Oceania and Americas regions. The results will still count for the EMEA region: following a call on socials by multiple top players, every high split racer in the region agreed to not abuse the exploit, showing a display of sportsmanship that many observers didn't believe would be respected.

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As Asia/Oceania players were the first to enter the race, everyone there expected some people to use the exploit and nothing to be done about it, so pretty much every racer there chose to level with others. As for America's, players made an effort in the first slots, inspired by what happened in EMEA, but as no formal agreement was made, some people in the later slots started to use the wallriding strategy, resulting in crashes and general chaos.

In the official statement released in game and on the Gran Turismo website, Polyphony Digital also stated their esports regulations have been amended, with the following additions:

Forbidden Actions
  • It is forbidden for a competitor to simultaneously participate in the same championship and season with multiple accounts.
  • It is forbidden to participate using another person's account for PlayStation®Network.
  • It is forbidden for a competitor to intentionally support another player during a race where they are not part of the same team.
  • It is forbidden for a competitor to exploit unintended gameplay mechanics and issues found in the software in order to gain any type of advantage.
  • Unsportsmanlike conduct.
If players are found engaging in forbidden activities, they will be dealt with accordingly, including but not limited to being banned from the championships.
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About author
GT-Alex
Alexandre Tonini
Global motorsports enjoyer, long time simracer, Gran Turismo veteran, I've been driving alongside top drivers since the dawn of online pro leagues on Gran Turismo, and qualified for the only cancelled FIA GTC World Tour. I've left aside competitive driving in 2020 to dedicate myself to IGTL, a simracing organisation hosting high quality events for pro racers and customers, to create with friends the kind of events we wished we could have had. We strive to provide the best events for drivers and the best content for viewers, and want to help the simracing scene grow and shine further in the global esports scene.

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Comments

Bram Hengeveld
Staff
Premium
In my humble opinion, people who do not respect normal driving standards should not be "penalized" with zero points. They should be banned for deliberately cheating.

Whether this is wallriding in Gran Turismo or racing through the grass in iRacing, this is not how real life motorsports works and this is also not how esports should work where we simulate real life racing.

Got no respect at all for people doing this. Especially not pro's who should represent our sport in the best possible way.
 
Jan Larsen
Premium
I'm with Bram on this one, except for one thing.

Polyphony didnt act on this before the events started, leaving many drivers clueless as what to do. 'Do I respect the rules and maybe not qualify?' 'Do I cheat and thus qualify but risk getting penalized?'

Polyphony is the real culprit here for not dealing with it before the event. Just like Iracing and their grass 'hack'.
 
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Bram Hengeveld
Staff
Premium
Jan Larsen said:
Polyphony didnt act on this before the events started, leaving many drivers clueless as what to do.
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If you are simulating motorsports nobody should be clueless about whether or not you should be riding walls right? :) Just like you don't cut corners, ride through grass, or deliberately knock off opponents etc

But yes, you are of course fully right they should have covered this for those who cannot apply common sense :)
 
T
Premium
They surely must have laid out a coherent set of rules before the competitions starts with simple ones we use in the Racing Club as well(two wheels inside the white lines at all times, etc). That should give the organizers a big enough stick to hit with.

It just baffles me that neither GT or iRacing did such a thing in advance from what we can tell on the outside...
 
Jan Larsen
Premium
Bram Hengeveld said:
If you are simulating motorsports nobody should be clueless about whether or not you should be riding walls right? :) Just like you don't cut corners, ride through grass, or deliberately knock off opponents etc
Click to expand...
When you're at this high a level as the Manufactures Cup are, nobody gives a dam about 'simulating motorsports', its all about the result. If someone finds an exploit and gets away with it, everyone else will too. Its up to the organizers to 'organize' whats right or wrong. If wallriding was clearly defined in the rules as a no go, then shame on drivers. If not, then shame on organizers.

Bram Hengeveld said:
But yes, you are of course fully right they should have covered this for those who cannot apply common sense :)
Click to expand...
A racer doing whatever he can to get to 1st place, with prices on the line, will never give common sense an ounce of thought. He'll do the exact opposite if he gains an advantage from it.

What I'm trying to say is that in proper competition with honor, pride, prices, money etc on the line (like in pro esports) you go for the result, even if that means 'bending' the rules to your advantage.

In gentleman racing, like here, you do the common sense thing first, then the rest.

Its important people differentiate between these two scenarios. I've been in both.

No offense, just to be clear :)
 
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J
I'm going to quote myself in regards to how I feel about the final decision (originally from my own thread/psuedo-article on this matter):

If I'm going to be honest, I don't like the call. PD have completely failed to take responsibility for allowing the glitch to exist in their game in the first place, and are instead blaming the players for trying to go as fast as possible. They had several days to fix the issue, and before this, had chances to set a precedent against glitch exploitation by acting when Toyota Cup round 1 had it's issues.

In that regard, I feel that the update to the "points of caution" doesn't actually help, as it fails to address why one glitch was quietly patched out without further comment on the round it affected, whilst another has recieved such an extreme response. It feels like PD caving to the EMEA witch-hunting mob, rather than a decision consistent with how GT eSports has been run to this point.
 
2
Bram Hengeveld said:
In my humble opinion, people who do not respect normal driving standards should not be "penalized" with zero points. They should be banned for deliberately cheating.

Whether this is wallriding in Gran Turismo or racing through the grass in iRacing, this is not how real life motorsports works and this is also not how esports should work where with simulate real life racing.

Got no respect at all for people doing this. Especially not pro's who should represent our sport in the best possible way.
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This. My team ran the iRacing 24 Hours of Spa and while we were in a lower split the rumors of the lawnmowing in the top spilt got around pretty quickly. We had one or two instances of someone trying to take advantage of the exploit but it was quickly noted in voice and pretty much shut down immediately due to peer pressure.

Following the event many of us were upset that iRacing chose to only hand out what were slaps on the wrist. In the least they should have vacated any podium finishes for teams that chose to use the exploit, and ban the entire team from a set number of future races.
Jan Larsen said:
When you're at this high a level as the Manufactures Cup are, nobody gives a dam about 'simulating motorsports', its all about the result. If someone finds an exploit and gets away with it, everyone else will too. Its up to the organizers to 'organize' whats right or wrong. If wallriding was clearly defined in the rules as a no go, then shame on drivers. If not, then shame on organizers.


A racer doing whatever he can to get to 1st place, with prices on the line, will never give common sense an ounce of thought. He'll do the exact opposite if he gains an advantage from it.

What I'm trying to say is that in proper competition with honor, pride, prices, money etc on the line (like in pro esports) you go for the result, even if that means 'bending' the rules to your advantage.

In gentleman racing, like here, you do the common sense thing first, then the rest.

Its important people differentiate between these two scenarios. I've been in both.

No offense, just to be clear :)
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Sorry, I disagree. No matter what you are doing, if you are unwilling to do that task/event/whatever, ethically, then you need to find another pursuit.

It should not take someone else telling you your actions are wrong, it should be on the individual to make and know that distinction.

I do not care what level you are when you participate, actions such as described in the article, and those of the "top" split in the iRacing Spa 24 only illustrate that the participants who used the exploit are people who are not to be trusted in real life.

Your actions, whether or not someone is watching, define you.

How do you wish to be defined?
 
J
2112 said:
I do not care what level you are when you participate, actions such as described in the article, and those of the "top" split in the iRacing Spa 24 only illustrate that the participants who used the exploit are people who are not to be trusted in real life.
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This is blaming the players for a problem the developers caused. I find it insulting that you would think less of me and others as people, simply because we all chose to go as fast as possible, on a video game where the objective is to go as fast as possible.
 
T
Bram Hengeveld said:
If you are simulating motorsports nobody should be clueless about whether or not you should be riding walls right? :) Just like you don't cut corners, ride through grass, or deliberately knock off opponents etc

But yes, you are of course fully right they should have covered this for those who cannot apply common sense :)
Click to expand...
Maybe there is a new Class Born...
 
rubaru
I have never participated in an online race such as this, so I don't really understand how everything works. But, in a real race, there would be stewards attempting to enforce the rules in real time. If a steward were to review an incident (wall-riding, corner cutting, etc.), could they not hand out warnings and penalties to be served during the race? Cut a corner three times, get a warning. Do it again, get a 5 second penalty. Do it again, get a black flag. Of course, for all this to work properly, the rules must be made known to all competitors prior to the start. If you don't announce that wall-riding is against the rules, then you need to expect (and allow) it to happen.

So, in summary...

1) Establish a firm set of rules, including what exploits may be used. If something is missed, too bad. Maybe you can review it and include in the next round.
2) Allow stewards to watch the race, review any part of the race, receive protests from other drivers, and enforce the rules in real time with an appropriate penalty system.
3) After a race, review all the rules, potential fixes, and all the penalties handed out with all the drivers so they understand why things happened and have know how to avoid them in the future.
 
Kenny Paton
Staff
Premium
2112 said:
No matter what you are doing, if you are unwilling to do that task/event/whatever, ethically, then you need to find another pursuit.
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While I applaud your ethical stance I'm smiling at it's naivety.
Watch any premier league football match where every game sees cheating, exploitation, there's even such a thing as a"professional" foul.
Unfortunately that's human nature when there's something on the line.
In this case and others it is up to the organisers/developers to close these loopholes once they're aware of the problem.
 
nepal roade
Jan Larsen said:
I'm with Bram on this one, except for one thing.

Polyphony didnt act on this before the events started, leaving many drivers clueless as what to do. 'Do I respect the rules and maybe not qualify?' 'Do I cheat and thus qualify but risk getting penalized?'

Polyphony is the real culprit here for not dealing with it before the event. Just like Iracing and their grass 'hack'.
Click to expand...
Can't agree with that at all. Cheating is never an option.
 
IceColdBeard_24
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

And that's why you cannot be serious enough about motor racing with video games !

Humans as any animal on this planet would look for a shorter and more efficient way to do things, our brains are wired this way ! Why would we take the longer road instead of the shortcut in front of us :coffee:
 
R
nepal roade said:
it is not human nature to cheat, it is human nature to be honest and decent.
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So in your world there would be no door locks, bicycle locks, passwords, security cameras, detection gates, police, courts, lawyers and prisons? Tell me where that world is and I will gladly move to that world.
 
2
JayOTT said:
This is blaming the players for a problem the developers caused. I find it insulting that you would think less of me and others as people, simply because we all chose to go as fast as possible, on a video game where the objective is to go as fast as possible.
Click to expand...
No, it is holding the players to a known and rational standard. Those participants participate and that level because, ultimately, they desire the recognition and possible a brighter future behind the wheel of a real car.

Do they want to get there by being a known cheat who will exploit not a loophole but something that allows them to use a part of a track that is, for all intents and purposes, known throughout the racing world as not part of the track?

Sure, the devs should have taken care of it, but the racers, already knowing what is and what is not the limits of the track, which is a widely known commodity, are cheating.

No matter how one tries to phrase it or couch it, that is the only reasonable conclusion.
Kenny Paton said:
While I applaud your ethical stance I'm smiling at it's naivety.
Watch any premier league football match where every game sees cheating, exploitation, there's even such a thing as a"professional" foul.
Unfortunately that's human nature when there's something on the line.
In this case and others it is up to the organisers/developers to close these loopholes once they're aware of the problem.
Click to expand...
Is it really naive to expect a certain level of ethical behavior from these people?

Sure, there are a lot of cheaters and people who exploit but what does that say about them?

Do they, then, deserve respect for their ability to get over on others? What does that say about that person? What does it say about those who accept it and try to rationalize or minimize the actions of those who choose to exploit/cheat?

Yes, the devs should close those loopholes, but the participants should not only be mature enough not to take advantage of them, but have the moral fiber to choose not to cheat.

As long as there are those that readily accept this type of behavior, there will be those who will take advantage of those people.

This is not only true in something relatively harmless such as sim racing, but in real life.

And we wonder how we got to the point we are at now in society. Perhaps before we complain about the behavior of public figures we need to take a long look in the mirror at ourselves and what we have chosen to deem acceptable.
 
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Kenny Paton
Staff
Premium
2112 said:
Is it really naive to expect a certain level of ethical behavior from these people?
Click to expand...
Going by past history yes it is.
I don't think anyone is criticizing your stance merely observing that the reality is somewhat different.
In an ideal word it would be great and we wouldn't need to have this discussion.
 

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