Rockstar Scoops Up Modding, Roleplay Communities In A Departure From Previous Policy
from the modding-their-behavior dept
It’s important coming into this story to know and note that Rockstar, the publisher behind hit franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, has waged a very public war on modding communities for its games for years now. Despite just how useful these modding communities tend to be in elongating the sales cycle for video games, Rockstar has gone after the tools for making mods for its games, has banned players for using mods even when those mods don’t change online gameplay, has DMCA blitzed the mods themselves, and so on. It’s a very purposeful series of actions clearly based on company policy.
Company policy that is perhaps undergoing some level of change. As Rockstar prepares for the release of GTA 6, the company also scooped up a community of dedicated fans of GTA and Red Dead Redemption 2, a community which has formed around roleplaying within those games and using all kinds of mods.
The team behind the biggest Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2 role-playing communities, Cfx.re, is officially becoming part of Rockstar Games. The new partnership comes ahead of the possible launch of GTA VI in 2024, and will lead to an updated policy that officially allows the addition of mods created in the FiveM and RedM communities to the hit open-world games.
“Over the past few years, we’ve watched with excitement as Rockstar’s creative community have found new ways to expand the possibilities of Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2, particularly through the creation of dedicated roleplay servers,” Rockstar wrote in an August 11 blog post on its website. “As a way to further support those efforts, we recently expanded our policy on mods to officially include those made by the roleplay creative community.”
Despite Rockstar’s reputation on communities like this, this is really cool in a couple of different ways. The minor reversal or allowance on mods will get the headline, and it’s certainly deserving of attention. For a company like Rockstar to relinquish some small amount of control in this manner when it has been so staunchly against mods isn’t insignificant.
And perhaps it goes hand in hand with the other cool thing about all of this: Rockstar embracing a fan community that is doing new and interesting things with its titles.
In addition to allowing users to make all sorts of mods for GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2, the Cfx.re team’s FiveM and RedM clients are also the nexus for massive role-playing communities around the games who use dedicated servers to make elaborate worlds where individual players take on various roles from criminal and civilian to create a more authentic online open world experience.
“This is a huge step forward in the growth of our community, and an opportunity for us to work with Rockstar Games to advance the FiveM platform and the creative community surrounding it,” Cfx.re wrote in a statement. “While our day-to-day operations won’t have any noticeable changes, with Rockstar’s support, we are going to continue to improve our platform and we are truly excited for what this means for our users, community, and creators!”
This doesn’t mean that Rockstar has definitely done a complete one-eighty when it comes to mods and these fan communities, but it’s a start at the very least. And we should appreciate that shifting this kind of company policy in a company as large as Rockstar is a bit like turning the Titanic.
In that context, Rockstar should be encouraged to do more of this and really open things up, allowing its greatest fans to make its properties more valuable through their fandom.
Filed Under: fan communities, fan mods, fans, fivem, modding, mods, redm, role playing, video game mods, video games
Companies: rockstar
Comments on “Rockstar Scoops Up Modding, Roleplay Communities In A Departure From Previous Policy”
Yeah, hope so, or it’s just more 3e and “well we gaveyou this one, now no one else is allowed to make mods ever”.
Re:
Well, that’s not really applicable here. FiveM is a mod framework and a multiplayer subsystem grafted onto the base game. It’s what makes many mods possible to use and to share with others.
eh?
Sorry Tim, but you must have read some very different announcements from myself and a lot of other FiveM users.
they went from saying “There are only two authorized Grand Theft Auto online services – the Rockstar Games -hosted Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer feature and Grand Theft Auto V “Grand Theft Auto Online”.
Any other online Grand Theft Auto service is unauthorized and your use would violate the license for your software. If you develop software for or host unauthorized servers you are at risk of legal action by Take Two”
to saying (changed on the 13th)
There are two authorized Grand Theft Auto Online multiplayer services:
FXserver is FiveM.
No-one is looking on this as a positive step at all. Especially coupled with June’s change in status about ‘roleplay‘ which really hits at things like LSPDFR.
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notably:
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I’ve been a fan of GTA RP for years and I’m looking at it as a positive thing because it clearly is far more likely to be a positive thing than a negative one. There are plenty of people with more cynical reads, and not without justification, but in this case I think the facts point in a positive direction. Consider:
So, far more likely than this being some attempt to interfere with or monetize the GTA RP community (which, as you point out, would be redundant given the existence of GTAO) is that it’s an attempt to make sure that the very visible GTA RP community, which has been a dominant presence on Twitch for years, isn’t out of sync with Rock*’s marketing strategy for GTA VI nor its standards of quality. By working to make FiveM quickly extensible to GTA VI they will make sure that the most enthusiastic fans of the franchise will make the leap and show off their new game rather than sticking around and distracting audiences and gamers from it. To me that makes way more sense than them buying it impose a bunch of unworkable, project-killing corporate strategy onto it.
But hey, I don’t have a crystal ball. They could always prove me wrong. And given the history it would be hard to blame anybody for betting on things going the other direction. But personally I am optimistic that this might be great, because there is so much untapped potential from the standpoint of doing great RP and telling incredible stories that reach far broader audiences, and this partnership could very well help move the community in that direction.
Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?
Was not that long ago that Take Two litigated against the re3 community project to port GTA III to newer platforms. That sadly ended with a settlement involving discontinuation of the project.
I surprised to read that you think this is positive. This is Rockstar taking control of the modding community and probably killing it off within a year
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I’m cautiously optimistic that will not happen.
Sad realities
GTA online is dependent on the methodology of mission packs, equipment sales, Micro purchases…
And making sure everyone has the exact same set of parameters makes sense.
But when modding offline play, there’s no reason aside from a power trip to ban mods.
I’m an old gamer in my methods. First you beat the game. Then you track down the cheat codes and have extra expansionary fun. And I don’t do much in online play in the first place.
So I fully understand both sides of this issue.
Personally I say mod offline, and flip a built in vanilla switch for online.