For about a week, players in GTA 5 Online earned millions of dollars, even though they barely did anything for it. A money glitch with an NPC provided the easy cash.
What did players exploit? In GTA Online, players can contact various NPCs who can assist them with different actions.
The NPC “Lester” can be contacted to request a plane for a fee. If the plane cannot spawn, the money is refunded. Players discovered that they could trick the game into refunding the money repeatedly, even though they only paid once. As long as they wanted.
How did the glitch work? Normally, the NPC Lester tries to spawn a plane in a hangar when you request it. Players parked a car in the hangar, called Lester, and then accelerated simultaneously. If done near a plane spawn, they got their $2000 back for requesting the plane. Every few seconds. Again and again. You just had to stand there with your car.
One player states that he earned over 10 million dollars in just 6 hours. Essentially doing nothing.
On Reddit and in GTA forums, this method of quickly earning money gained a lot of attention quickly. After all, players only had to stand around and received thousands of dollars in seconds. Players posted screenshots of everyone chilling in the hangar while filling their accounts (via Kotaku).
Rockstar needed 2 attempts to fix the glitch
How did Rockstar Games respond? A few days after the glitch became famous, Rockstar made its first patch attempt. It quickly spread on Reddit that the glitch no longer worked and Rockstar had fixed the issue. At least that was the thought. Shortly after, players reported “The glitch still works. Just slightly different.”
For the new glitch, players had to park the Mobile Operations Center in a hangar. This allowed them to block 2 hangars at once and the money flowed again. Another victory for the players.
This is how Rockstar put an end to it: On February 28, about a week after the glitch was spread, the developers released a hotfix for GTA Online. This had the simple solution to fix the glitch. The costs for obtaining planes from Lester were simply removed. Because if you pay nothing, you can’t get your money back.
What happens now with the illegitimate money? It is still unclear how Rockstar Games will handle this. Players report on Reddit that they still possess the glitch money. In cases of major violations, the developers also act decisively and delete the acquired money. But this doesn’t seem to have happened with the Lester glitch yet.
Meanwhile, the GTA Online community continues to search for new exploits to earn easy money. How you do it in legitimate ways, we show you here:
