Early in June 2020, the Red Dead Online players reported that they were assaulted by a bunch of NPCs that looked like KKK members.
Apparently, they were attacked by cheaters, since the KKK models are only available in Red Dead Redemption 2 single-player campaign and are not used in Red Dead Online.
I wouldn't normally share this, but we're seeing more & more posts about it on reddit & Discord
Will @RockstarGames ever do anything about modders abusing the "Rockstar Message" text in Red Dead Online & spawning klan npcs?
Give us crew/friend only sessions. Stop enabling this pic.twitter.com/WXsRihsrqV
— Red Dead Online Community (@RedDeadRDC) June 13, 2020
Cheaters established big groups of NPCs, under the guise of KKK members and by managing them attacked the players. The perpetrators accompanied their raids with various racist and misogynist messages, which were sent through the cracked Rockstar Message.
However, in mid-June, following numerous complaints from Red Dead Online users, Rockstar Games just immediately took control of the situation. As reported by data miner Tez2, the developers released a patch that tracks the sudden appearance of suspiciously large NPC groups and checks if any of them has a KKK model and immediately removes it.
This is hardly the first time when cheaters invaded Red Dead Online – one need only to recall two-headed skeletons, the “bearapocalypse” or horrifying piles of animal carcasses chasing people.
