Rockstar Games have issued a new mod policy for their titles. There are a few changes and additions which are certainly important to learn about. Based on what Rockstar have shared in these new guidelines, various mods are probably going to be removed very soon.
Rockstar have had a long and tumultuous relationship with modders. Both Take-Two and themselves have taken down plenty of mods in the past including serious legal action on individuals that have looked to reverse engineer two decades old titles. At the same time they have purchased Cfx.re and own FiveM/RedM, modified versions of the games. Plus, poured some amount of resource investment into GTA RP server nopixel; even adding it to the Rockstar Games Launcher.
Whilst some fans thoughts these latter moves was the company loosening up against mods, that’s not the case. The new rules are also quite broad, personally. It is a wide net. Some harmless mods that have existed for years technically go against this new legal speak. Let’s dive into the new set of guidelines.
The End Of Some Community Projects
Under the “Respect Our Games” section, Rockstar reiterates fans cannot “expand or modify official storylines, plots, missions, characters, or other elements of our established continuity.” Same goes for bringing maps like Liberty City into GTA V: “Do not make mods that combine maps, locations, characters, storylines, in-game assets, or other IP from one Rockstar Games title into another title.”
A new modification guideline restricts anyone from modifying the games to work on hardware that isn’t supported by Rockstar “Do not modify our games to operate on consoles, hardware devices, or other platforms where they have not been officially released by Rockstar Games.”
This is bad for a bunch of projects that have been in development. Over the past few years, we’ve seen various people attempt to port Grand Theft Auto V over to platforms such as the Nintendo Switch and Android. We’ve actually reported on these before and they are very impressive. The game runs and it’s playable on devices not officially supported by Rockstar Games.
The same can be said for GTA III which got its own SEGA Dreamcast port. The game was originally in development for that platform before Rockstar completely moved over to PlayStation. This one was especially a huge community effort and it’s been really fantastic to see its progress. Unfortunately, This project others’ days are numbered.
FiveM/RP Changes
Some mods and even on GTA RP servers on FiveM are designed to look like real life military content. Rockstar say you cannot “engage in or promote conflict roleplay or military simulations depicting real-world armed organizations.”
Rockstar do allow modders to monetize their work through the Rockstar Games’ Creator Platform Marketplace which we’ve reported on here. “Unless permitted via Rockstar Games’ official Creator Platform, all modding must be strictly non-commercial.” Mods have to be approved by Rockstar to get added into the storefront and it uses Tebex for payment. This isnt entirely new as it’s been part of the FiveM agreement but now Rockstar are raising awareness of it a bit more; it is certainly clearer and made known on their own site.
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1 Comment
I will do with the game I buy, regardless of what padding and “licence”. Obviously respect copyright, and refrain from sharing assets from other games, rather using the modding structures that use a person’s game copies existing copy/data for pre-existing assets.
But unfortunately Rockstar can not control how their software is handled. They can reserve the right to choose what content appears on their own services, but they do not control the internet. Rubbish, this is why nobody feels sorry when they’re hacked.