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.
About author
GT-Alex
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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Since when the wrongdoing becomes ok just because "most people" do it?

It´s amazing how hypocritical people can be nowadays.

If ethics is unimportant for you, I don´t care.

Just spare yourself the embarassment trying to justify your actions
I didn't take part in the Gran Turismo events - I'm not that good.
And I'm not trying to justify the actions of those that used this particular loophole in the rules of the game. Just pointing out that the rules specify what is and isn't permitted... what do we do with things that aren't defined within the rules or not clearly specified?

I worked for a software firm where we would have customers do things that were unexpected and so cause problems. The development manager would tell the support team the that customer was using the software incorrectly... but my view was that if the software allowed them to do something then it should handle that properly. If they shouldn't be doing some task the software should prevent that action from being taken.

The rules for the Gran Turismo events have now been changed so as to include this exploit - and unspecified others - in their forbidden actions list.
This would now seem to be a general "if in doubt, don't" catch-all rule.
But the problem is who decides what are "unintended gameplay mechanics and issues found in the software"?

For example, on a particular corner the track limits are incorrectly defined so you can cut that corner in such a way that you don't get a penalty for doing so...
 
Okay 1 thing I'm unclear on with the iRacing grass cutting thing. On the NASCAR side every off track is a 1x incident. After you accumulate 17x you get a passthrough penalty, and after 25 you're going to Dairy Queen (DQ). So it seems you could gain advantage 16 times assuming you were 100% clean the rest of the time? Unless it's different in this series it doesn't strike me as that much of an issue? Besides at the pro level if you're running around with 16x someone is gunna notice and give you a bump for at least a 2x to send you down pit road.

I guess if they just did it in the final few laps to run down the leader or to pull away as the leader that could be an issue.
 
Okay 1 thing I'm unclear on with the iRacing grass cutting thing. On the NASCAR side every off track is a 1x incident. After you accumulate 17x you get a passthrough penalty, and after 25 you're going to Dairy Queen (DQ). So it seems you could gain advantage 16 times assuming you were 100% clean the rest of the time? Unless it's different in this series it doesn't strike me as that much of an issue? Besides at the pro level if you're running around with 16x someone is gunna notice and give you a bump for at least a 2x to send you down pit road.

I guess if they just did it in the final few laps to run down the leader or to pull away as the leader that could be an issue.
Your competitors have no way of knowing how many "x" you have until after the race. There are 3rd party apps that attempt to show this information but they are always wrong...
 
Okay 1 thing I'm unclear on with the iRacing grass cutting thing. On the NASCAR side every off track is a 1x incident. After you accumulate 17x you get a passthrough penalty, and after 25 you're going to Dairy Queen (DQ). So it seems you could gain advantage 16 times assuming you were 100% clean the rest of the time? Unless it's different in this series it doesn't strike me as that much of an issue? Besides at the pro level if you're running around with 16x someone is gunna notice and give you a bump for at least a 2x to send you down pit road.

I guess if they just did it in the final few laps to run down the leader or to pull away as the leader that could be an issue.
One of the aspects of the iRacing exploit was what is considered "off-track" in the sports car side of the sim. In the sports car side a car is considered "off-track" or out of bounds when the centerline of the car crosses the white line.

The lawn mowing exhibition was able to happen without getting an off-track because you could put your outside tires on the grass without having the centerline of your car cross the white line.

Of course, the other aspect of the exploit was that while dropping your tires you were able to cool them off without a loss of performance due to grass or dirt being on the tire, and without loss of speed.

iRacing had an issue that if you touched the grass you would instantly slide. When they fixed that they swung the pendulum too much to the other side resulting in the exploit.
 
Where does "good and evil" even come into this? As long as people keep trying to argue from that angle I will keep refuting it.

Does riding the wall in a racing game to go faster bring harm to anyone? NO.
Was riding the wall an illegal act at the time the race happened? NO.

Therefore, it was not an immoral thing to do, no matter how many people come into this thread and make illogical arguments that don't make any sense in the world of competition. MAKE A RATIONAL ARGUMENT, stop bringing morality into it when attempting to win a competition is not an evil thing to do.
It might not be "imoral" (which is debatable in this context), but its intelectually dishonest, and it undermines the sole purppose of the game. The point is to DRIVE the car around the track, not WALLRIDE around the track. At that point, you are not even atempting to play the game as it should be played. In my previous analogy, i explained it would be akin to me just grabbing the king out of a chess board, throwing it away, and saying "i win".
 

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Alexandre Tonini
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