Stamina is an anti-cheating measure designed as one of several measures to help protect the game against unwanted behaviour.

How does Stamina work?

Your stamina decreases while you're actively playing, and increases while your account is inactive.

Only active usage of your account decreases your stamina, so idle usage doesn't count (e.g. leaving your account logged in or even open on the screen).

IMPORTANT: Stamina has NO effect on your gameplay as long as your level is "Normal", which is the case for over 99% of players.

In the rare case that your level falls to "Low" or "Critical", some areas of the game may become more difficult or restricted as detailed below.

Please note that the changes applied when your Stamina level reduces are subject to change at any time in future.

Stamina levels

Low stamina

When your stamina reaches the "Low" level, the following changes occur:

• Your Small Crimes timer is doubled
• Your Vehicle Theft timer is doubled
• Your Extortion timer is doubled
• Your Prison Busting timer is doubled
• Your Bomb Defusal timer is doubled
• Your Looting timer is doubled

Critical stamina

When your stamina reaches the "Critical" level, the following further changes occur:

• The number of Looting options reduces to 2.
• You cannot purchase bullets from the Bullet Store.
• You cannot make bids in the Auction House.

How does Stamina help prevent cheating?

The purpose of Stamina is to help limit progress made by accounts engaged in rule-breaking behaviour which hasn't been or can't be prevented by traditional methods.

For example, it's impossible to detect if two or more people are sharing an account on a single computer (which can occur even if the account operators are in a separate locations using remote desktop software). Stamina at least ensures that when this does occur, the activity of the shared account is throttled once reaching a certain threshold, allowing fair players the opportunity to still compete.