There are two reasons to be upset about the great news that "GTA 5" will be free on the Epic store: first, I recently purchased GTA 5 for $30, but not enough to get a refund. That sucks, and second, I enjoy GTA Online.

As anyone could have predicted, the free distribution of GTA 5 has led to a spike in cheating. Over the weekend, one acquaintance called GTA Online "unplayable," in part because Rockstar's servers are not handling the influx of players well, and in part because of the mods.

GTA Online is a strange one, with players tending to refer to those who endanger the game as "modders" rather than "cheaters." (All legitimate cheaters in GTA 5 are single-player only). One reason for this is that GTA modders are fun people who use their divine powers to entertain everyone; GTA can be fun without being structured, and spawning flying saucers for an alien gang is hardly a "cheat" - even if it is against the EULA and harmless tomfoolery.

But had most GTA Online modders shown restraint and goodness, they would not have been so condemned. No, many use easily available power for evil.

GTA Online modding appears to have spiked because of gifting (which I infer from the number of recent posts about mods in the subreddit), but that is not an entirely new problem. Griefing may be raging now, but complaints about modders have been around since the launch of the PC version.

Stopping the vicious GTA online modders may be tricky for Rockstar. There would be hell to pay if Rockstar cracked down on single-player mods, and we love the multiplayer mod "FiveM," so an all-out assault on mods would be undesirable. But the same goes for griefers who try to crash people's games by spawning tons of planes.

Rockstar has banned the practice of breaking into the lobby of GTA Online; GTA 5 is available for free on the Epic Store until May 21.