Any online multiplayer game will be a magnet for cheats and exploits - it's basically a rule of thumb at this point. It's not that developers don't care, because most do, but cheaters will always find a way to ruin the experience for everybody else. Also, cheatmakers are more than happy to take advantage of this lucrative industry.

But, while cheats and hackers very rarely cause more than a minor annoyance, Grand Theft Auto Online is currently the victim of a dangerous account-banning exploit.

Tez2 reports that a new GTA Online exploit lets cheaters mess with everything from stats to corrupting your account, which may result in your account getting banned or deleted from the game permanently.

Taz2 warns that the "partial remote code execution" glitch is getting abused and some are paying to find out the extent of how much damage it can cause. The insider theorizes that the exploit could affect PC performance, which is why the GTA Online community wants all players to avoid playing the game completely in the meantime.

Even Speyedr, the creator of popular anti-cheat tool, Guardian, is discouraging players from logging in. They've gone as far as to disable access to the tools "in an attempt to dissuade users" from playing GTA Online and believing Guardian can protect them.

It's unclear who is behind this exploit, but Rockstar has yet to issue a statement.

Due to its prevalence, we can expect Rockstar to be all-in on finding the reason behind the exploit and issuing a patch.

It's a shame that this bug came just as Rockstar released the most recent update for GTA Online. We guess players will have to wait for a while before they can safely ride around in taxis.