GTA Online Update Removes ‘Easy Way Out’ from Interaction Menu

Highlights

• Rockstar Games removed GTA Online’s Easy Way Out option in a recent update, causing surprise among fans.
• Players can still kill off their characters by using the Kill Yourself option in the pause menu’s Online section.
• The removal of Easy Way Out caused some confusion and frustration, though players can still use Passive Mode to decrease their chances of getting stuck while playing.

Rockstar Games has removed Grand Theft Auto Online‘s Easy Way Out option in the title’s most recent update seemingly without telling anyone. However, the game still offers a way for players to kill off their characters should they find themselves stuck in the world of Los Santos.

GTA 5‘s single-player experience is chaotic, but its standalone multiplayer mode, GTA Online, offers a whole new level of mayhem. With GTA Online servers being able to support dozens of people, interactions between players are common and can get intense pretty quickly. Sometimes in the heat of gameplay, players find themselves getting stuck between world objects or NPCs. This kind of problem was long dealt with by GTA Online‘s Easy Way Out option, which would force a player’s character to die and allow them to respawn in the world. Fans were surprised then when they discovered that this useful tool has disappeared following the release of GTA Online’s most recent major update.

While Rockstar Games’ official patch notes for GTA Online‘s 1.68 update made no mention of Easy Way Out being removed, people like dataminer Tez2 found that the option was simply no longer available in the player interaction menu after the update went live on December 12. As getting stuck in GTA Online is a common issue due to the multiplayer experience’s chaotic nature, players were rightfully worried regarding the missing feature. However, other GTA-focused accounts like Rockstar Universe were quick to point out that players can still force a GTA Online character’s death by pausing the game, going to the Online tab, and choosing the Kill Yourself option.

For GTA Online players who want to avoid this kind of route completely, they can just rely on the game’s Passive Mode to decrease their chances of getting stuck while playing. This option, however, only provides players invincibility at the cost of not being able to harm other players. Passive mode in GTA Online has also had issues, including workarounds that allowed players to still kill one another.

Easy Way Out’s removal from GTA Online‘s player interaction menu understandably angered or confused a lot of players, but things should calm down once people learn of the Kill Yourself option. CD Project Red faced similar backlash last September when their popular RPG Cyberpunk 2077 received its long-awaited update 2.0 and was criticized for its many significant gameplay changes. The difference between Rockstar Games and CD Projekt Red, though, is the latter’s transparency about the changes that were implemented in its title.

Still, Rockstar Games should be credited for what GTA Online’s latest major update brought to its players. The patch, also known as The Chop Shop update, added a lot of content and improvements to the game. Among The Chop Shop update’s additions were new robbery missions that feature the character Yusuf Amir from GTA 4‘s The Ballad of Gay Tony DLC.