In an unprecedented move within the GTA modding scene, Rockstar Games yesterday announced that the team behind FiveM and RedM multiplayer on PC has officially joined the company.

Cfx.re, or CitizenFX Collective, is a small team behind the development of both FiveM and RedM clients, a PC multiplayer mod that connects to Grand Theft Auto V or Red Dead Redemption 2 to essentially provide a virtual playground with online play. Creators can host their own servers, or buy external hosting, via the frameworks, paving the way for an endless amount of custom content such as game modes, stories, missions, and most-notably, roleplaying.

Growth has steadily increased since the first iterations of the mod released in 2014, with GTA RP (roleplay) exploding on live-streaming services and well-known content creators still leading GTAV views on Twitch today; there are frequently over 200k players online at any given time. One of the most notable servers, NoPixel, retains a massive community with a dedicated development team of their own.

None of this would be possible without FiveM and RedM, and as of yesterday, it’s all officially part of Rockstar Games, painting a bright future for community-driven play and user-generated content.

Day-to-day operations will not change right now and support will continue to be lead by Cfx.re, according to the team and Rockstar Support, but with Rockstar’s backing, wider improvements to the platform can easily continue, and we’re sure there are lots of plans for months ahead from this incredible collaboration.

Today we are extremely excited to announce that Cfx.re, the team behind the FiveM and RedM projects – is now officially a part of Rockstar Games!
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.
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!
And for those curious about what else Rockstar is working on, please understand that our partnership with Rockstar Games is focused on our FiveM and RedM platforms. So please, do not ask us about the next GTA!
Thank you all for your support. We can’t wait to see what the future brings!

The Cfx.re team

If you’re on PC, check out FiveM and RedM for yourself! There’s lots of information on how to start within their dedicated Cfx.re Forum, and it’s also where you can keep an eye out for announcements and get support. We’ve also opened up our own section on GTAForums to spread awareness and encourage discussion within our own community.

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If you’re a regular in GTA social media circles, chances are you’ve heard about the recent events in which Take-Two Interactive, wholly owners of Rockstar Games’ titles, are taking legal action against a group of programming enthusiasts responsible for reverse engineering GTA III and GTA Vice City. The work-in-progress projects, known as re3 and reVC, were first shared on code repository website GitHub at the beginning of the year. Praised by the wider modding community as well as the media, it allowed for modders to make adjustments and improvements to the games at source, as opposed to a “regular” mod, and enabled porting to devices previously unused by the franchise such as the Nintendo Switch and Wii U.

Matters were shortly complicated after they hit headlines, however, as the team were issued with a DMCA takedown notice of copyright infringement via GitHub and the repository was subsequently removed. Without knowing too much about the specifics personally, the idea of reverse engineering is apparently a grey area when it comes to matters of copyright, though this can depend on the regulations of the country in which the code is created and shared from. The team reportedly sought legal advice and then filed a counter-claim to GitHub with the understanding that reverse engineering is fair-use as it would require a legitimately purchased copy of the games to utilise the amended code. GitHub later sided with the modders on the matter, though I’m not aware of the finer details on how this came to be, with re3 and reVC being re-instated and shareable once more.

Some months later to last week, on 2^nd September, it was shared across Twitter that further action from Take-Two had been filed to court to determine final resolution to their initial takedown request of the projects. The lawsuit documents, which are available to the public, allege that the projects are subject to copyright infringement and DMCA violations, and Take-Two are seeking financial damages in a trial by jury.

These events, for many, are but another “nail in the coffin” when it comes to modding GTA, or other Take-Two-owned titles, as modders and mod-users ponder their position in what once was a very enthusiastic and dedicated community. Creators that received similar news through DMCA notices of their mods on popular hosting websites ModDB and GTA5Mods back in July are now extremely concerned that they too will be named in a lawsuit in due time, given the fact that their mods are still available on other outlets. The team responsible for the GTA:Underground mod have also notified the community that they are ceasing development out of their fears for being included.

Feedback across the discussion topic on GTAForums has been less than positive, as expected, with the community now at the point where they feel further clarification is needed from Take-Two on the limits of modding due to the actions taken this year against those that feel they are amongst the most hardcore and loyal players of the fanbase. Some modders have gone to the extent of feeling as though it’s time to “retire” from creating mods, and that they can no longer publicly support Take-Two-owned products at the expense of those named in the lawsuit due to the potential financial hardship they are facing.

From a realistic standpoint, those with a better idea of legal matters including virtual law YouTuber Richard Hoeg and game developer Modern Vintage Gamer, have made detailed videos stating that while the moral aspects of suing are questionable, Take-Two as a corporation are within their rights to claim copyright infringement in order to protect their products due to the ToS and EULA of the games themselves prohibiting reverse engineering. They take issue with the lawsuit claiming the projects promote piracy despite informing users they must own a real copy of the games, but they agree that the case will be very difficult to defend from the modder’s perspective due to strict US laws, where the lawsuit has been filed, and counter-claiming a DMCA from corporation of this size would have been ill-advised to begin with.

So where do we go from here? In general, we’re at a bit of an impasse as observers of these events, due to court proceedings already being set in motion. Ideas of boycotts, review bombs and crowdfunding are being thrown around, but my own advice to the community at this moment in time would be to steer clear of inserting ourselves into lawsuits, which are often expensive and complicated enough already, while the team focus on what is required of them. The best course of action is for them to secure legal representation before the case moves forward, in hope of achieving the least imposing outcome for themselves in what may be a clear-cut decision for the jury at trial. It’s entirely possible that an agreement of some sorts could be arranged as well, or a settlement out of court, similar to that of the Red Dead Redemption mod creator whom was sued in 2019, in order to bring closure to the situation as long as the team cease any further attempts at sharing the original projects in the future.

What could this mean for modding overall, is even more difficult to say. It’s not immediately clear whether the flexibility on what kinds of mods are supported will be tightened any further following the recent DMCA takedowns, given this case is specifically against reverse engineering. Spirits are at an all-time low amongst the modding community, who at large agree that while Take-Two “can” take this kind of action, it doesn’t mean that they “should”, since at the foundation of the majority of mods is love for the franchise, not malicious intent. Events have been exposed by several gaming media websites as it stands, though further comment or clarification from Take-Two is not likely given the pending case.

Actions do have consequences**, which is a thought I wish the team had more carefully considered at the beginning of this road, but now is not the time for “I told you so”, even if it feels like things should be different. It would be against my nature however to wish ill-will or financial difficulty on any of the team, so I’m sure the community will join me in wishing them all the best possible outcome in this unfortunate case.

**It has been suggested to me that these particular words are rude and/or appear to be gloating towards the modding community – I would just like to add that this in no way my intention for this article; this commentary wasn’t published to determine what is true or false about the lawsuit itself, but just to lay bare a simple timeline of events from an outsider’s perspective. I admire and support the modding community for their skills and dedication to creating fun projects for other players to enjoy, which has been an integral part of GTANet for two decades. It is simply a difference of opinion on how I would have personally approached this situation if I was involved myself from the beginning, but that does not mean I claim to speak for everyone – others are free to hold their own opinions on how or why things have escalated to this point based on the information shared here and elsewhere. Thank you.

This article will be updated should we learn any further or relevant information.

The post From Mods to Morals to Lawsuits: A Summary of Recent Events appeared first on GTANet.com.

What is one of the best things in Grand Theft Auto? Other than shooting up everyone and everything you see, robbing stores in go-karts or jetpacks, making the police’s life harder every dar, going on odd jobs and contracts for people you didn’t even know existed before… The last part of the name of course – cars!

Modded, unmodded, stock or finetuned by our “trusty” Los Santos mechanics, and even including some creative additions to the PC Story Mode, today we’re highlighting what some of what the snap community has to show. From the quickest cheetahs of a racing or sports car to the most modest, we aren’t discriminating.

As always, snaps are handpicked from the GTAForums, Twitter and Social Club communities. Enjoy.

Post your photos on GTAForums or use the #GTAOnline / #RedDeadOnline hashtags on Twitter and you might see your efforts highlighted in future GTANet Snap Saturdays!

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It began around the 8^th July when it was reported on Twitter that mod-hosting database GTA5-Mods.com received a DMCA notice from Take-Two to remove two Grand Theft Auto V mods, Vice City Remastered and San Andreas Remastered, from their website. The purpose of these mods were to “remaster” the original VC and SA maps and update them using GTAV’s engine. At the time, the commotion out of this news mainly danced around the idea of this confirming the possibility of 3D-era remasters or remakes of Rockstar’s own potentially being announced.

Fast forward to this weekend, and a new sweep of DMCA notices were served to GTA5-Mods once again and now also to ModDB.com, affecting several more mods including GTA Underground, GTA Liberty City, Vice Cry, GTAV Bullworth and more. All of these mods involve updating or improving upon 3D-era assets or porting their maps to GTAV. Subsequently the community has reacted to this news with concern and a feeling that all kinds of mods are now at risk of being shelved in the future. Several gaming media outlets, including PC Gamer, Game Informer and Eurogamer amongst others have already reported on the developing story, and a topic on GTAForums.com has received over 40,000 views.

Now, it is worth noting here that a DMCA notice is a copyright infringement, similar to when you record and post video online containing licenced music that you have no right to share; it would get DMCA flagged as removed by the “owner” of that music. This is different to a cease-and-desist order that was previously sent to the OpenIV team, which essentially forces creators to stop all development and sharing or be served with legal action. Luckily the decision against OpenIV was reversed back in 2017 and prompted clarification on modding to be added to the Rockstar Support website. It was last updated in 2019 to add point (iv), which includes maps:

As it stands with this group of mods at the date of posting this article, “only” DMCA notices have been sent to the mod-hosting websites we’ve mentioned thus far. As far as we are aware, their project websites, sharing platforms such as Google Drive and even their linked files that are shared on our own Featured Mods area of GTAForums.com have not been affected nor any removals requested. The individual mod authors have also not been contacted by any legal teams of Take-Two personally, so they are understandably concerned and confused about what this may mean for the future of their mods.

Of course this could change at any moment over the coming weeks and we will inform the affected teams if our own platform is approached with a request – but it’s not really our place to say or answer for without a formal update from Take-Two at this current moment in time. It is thought by some of us who are monitoring the situation that this may be a “soft” takedown in order to prevent or control how easily these mods can be accessed by the wider community.  “Why now?” is what most are asking given some of these mods are almost as old as the franchise itself; is it because of a policy change that is once again attempting to limit or restrict the depths that modding can go to with Take-Two owned assets? Or is it because there actually is an announcement on the horizon of remastered or remade games, causing Take-Two to batten down the hatches on projects that may affect the sales or marketing of the re-emergence of some of the most important games in the industry’s history?

Regardless of what is happening, how things may unfold or change as the community keeps watch, GTANet’s position in the modding community has always been central since our inception – we have always supported and encouraged singleplayer modding, creating subforums and a hosting site of our own for the community to utilise, platforms that are still used to this day.

As a side note, what we will not support is the toxicity that spreads from these kinds of events from certain members of the community that wish to use other players, game developers and even us as a fansite as scapegoats for actions that we have no say or influence over.  It’s very unfortunate and disappointing to us that ongoing discussions have been marred by this, and unfortunately lead to the closure of the discussion topic on GTAForums.com. Over the last days we have had to witness threats of death and abuse, insults and questions over our integrity as a platform simply for not writing this article you’re reading at this very moment sooner than is expected. Anger is best filtered by constructive action rather than harmful words, and targeted harassment will not be tolerated by us regardless of outcome, so we hope the community can learn from this digression and turn it into something hopeful going forward.

In any case, given that modding is such a dedicated community within GTA and has even contributed to the careers of game developers around the world in some form or another, our final stance is that we are certain there is a cause here that could be explained by those responsible to do so, and all we can do is hope for some kind of resolve as feedback continues. The relationship between Take-Two and the modding community has not always been smooth, the curiosity and desire to investigate has caused a number of problems when it comes to the dark side of modding, such as leaks, cheating, hacking and exploitation of the online portions of GTA, which in themselves cause frustration. However, I think it would be safe for me to state with conviction that a majority of the community would be disappointed if the wider policy of singleplayer modding has changed within the company, and we would be saddened for those who are genuinely hurting over the time and effort they have put into freely creating projects for the rest of the community to share and enjoy. If I could, I would appeal to Take-Two to help us reassure the modding community that creativity and expression is not at stake at this time of distress, as much as I would implore the community themselves to practice patience and civility when banding together in protest for matters that are important to them.

This article will be updated with any new developments, should the need arise.

Updated: 2nd August 2021

Today, Take-Two held the first of their quarterly earnings conference calls for the current fiscal year. This mostly concerns financial reporting for shareholders and investors, and not the time or place for any news to break, however one analyst (Mike Hickey of The Benchmark Company) took it upon themselves to ask about the recent modding DMCA notices during an open Q&A at the end of the call. Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two, answered with the following:

“In terms of take downs, we’re pretty flexible, frankly. That said, if the economy is threatened, or if there is bad behaviour—and we know how to define that— then we would issue a takedown notice.”

This may not actually address the recent events specifically, as no particular mods or modding types were mentioned in the answer; it’s more of a re-iteration of the modding policy we’re already aware of, though reduces things down to the company being open to modding unless it directly conflicts with business or there is abuse. This unfortunately doesn’t clear up or clarify anything for us just yet, but we thought it would be worth taking note of in this article anyway, as statements such as these are not always easy to come by and it may be the last we hear about this situation in an official capacity.

The discussion currently continues in a new topic on GTAForums.

The post The People vs Take-Two: Redux appeared first on GTANet.com.

The staff will try and pick up our favourites and curated them weekly, enjoy our first batch!

The post Weekly IV/V Screenshots Spotlight Issue 1 appeared first on GTANet.com.

The race track has been converted by user iryu and in the video there is many vehicles created by several other community users.

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It all began on Wednesday with the lead developer of veteran modding tool and file explorer OpenIV, and the previously upcoming Liberty City V map mod, announcing that the projects will be taken down due to a Cease and Desist order from Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar Games parent company and publisher. It came at the shock of many and has so far created an uproar of anger and sadness amongst the community. Find below some history of what we know to explain what has happened.

First and foremost let us highlight its importance to us; modding has always been at the heart of our community since the series conception; we have dedicated forums with thousands of topics and the humble GTAGarage is responsible for over 124 million downloads alone, and it doesn’t stop here. There’s a plethora of mod hosting websites that fans use to download and share a variety of mods, all with the intention of improving, customising or creating fun in singleplayer. The surge of YouTube has only further thrown modding into the spotlight, with many YouTubers using tools to showcase crazy mods to their subscribers or create wonderful machinima movies with such creativity they’re pretty much professional storytellers.

Rockstar themselves have always been supportive of modding, even showcasing the best they’ve seen on the Newswire, and in the very early days there’s examples of them using modding tools during development.

So what has changed?

There is a dark side of modding that affects the multiplayer of GTA, something that shouldn’t even be associated with the word modding, but has sadly been coupled with it by its main abusers: hackers and cheaters. Unlimited health, invisibility and teleportation were some examples of the common trickery experienced in the GTA IV multiplayer days, but today in GTA Online there are exploits through mods that are so damaging to the function and economy of the game that it has rendered it useless for many players: the draining of cash, the dropping of unimaginable amounts of money, the wiping of vehicles, the manipulation of rank and other technical abuse such as freezing games, altering movements and kicking players. The most recent outburst of this was reported in April and has been ongoing since, with updates only stopping them in their tracks for a short time before they roll out again.

So what has this got to do with OpenIV?

Well, we’re not entirely sure. Since the news about the shut down of the tool has hit many gaming news sites, the reputable PC Gamer ran an article about it when the news first broke and they managed to reach out to Rockstar themselves for a comment. They have since responded with the following: Rockstar said:

Take-Two’s actions were not specifically targeting single player mods. Unfortunately OpenIV enables recent malicious mods that allow harassment of players and interfere with the GTA Online experience for everybody. We are working to figure out how we can continue to support the creative community without negatively impacting our players.

Though fairly vague in detail, it states that singleplayer mods weren’t the target of their Cease and Desist order, but that OpenIV as a tool allows some of the exploits used by hackers and cheaters in GTA Online as mentioned up above.

This statement has, unfortunately, left the community even more confused about the situation and the future of modding. The developers of OpenIV, and many users of the tool, have been categorically expressing that it has never been and cannot be used for GTA Online. Its sole function for the decade it has been in use, according to members commenting, is for the modding of singleplayer and the exploration of game files. It’s even said that if you mod GTAV with OpenIV, you can’t enter GTA Online at all.

It’s entirely possible through their own testing that Rockstar have found examples of players using such tools to exploit the game in some way or another that the rest of the community isn’t aware of. In order to battle hackers and cheaters, we’re assuming they’ve probably tested the ways in which it’s done to see for themselves how GTA Online can be abused, and if they have found something that is actively happening in this abhorrent side of the community, it could explain why they’ve clearly mentioned it in their statement to PC Gamer that OpenIV is at fault. Since we’re not able to question Rockstar about this ourselves, and it might not be likely they will make anymore statements on it, we can accept there’s some element of truth to our assumptions.

So could there be another reason if Rockstar support modding? What is this about the leaking culture?

Earlier on we tweeted about the idea that leaking and sharing of files could another big cause behind the Cease and Desist order, not necessarily the practice of modding itself. This came about after member @Ash_735, a modder who has close connections to the media, claimed to have seen the Cease and Desist document that was served to the OpenIV team and summarised the orders it gave:

As stated, they no longer support mods that allow fans to “look inside” game files or “extract” them for use. There’s also a mention of loading “additional” content into games and “transferring” assets between games being disallowed, which explains why the RDRV and LCV map mods were taken down. If we’re interpreting Ash’s post correctly, this leads us to a couple of potential reasons that OpenIV could be at fault for:

1) “Leakers” who have made a name for themselves by looking at unreleased items in the game files such as vehicles from major GTA Online updates and showcasing them for all to see

2) Modding GTA Online game files so that they are accessible in singleplayer is not compatible with their business model due to the microtransaction econcomy

3) Tin foil hat time: Modding is no longer compatible with their business model because paid mods, like Bethesda’s Creation Club, or official modding APIs could be a thing of the future

Our bets are on 1) on this occasion.

The community response

As stated up above, a mixture of anger and sadness was the first reaction to this breaking story about OpenIV’s fate. So far, the community has responded in the only way it feels it can; with protest. Fans have been posting on these forums, on Reddit, on NeoGAF and across many gaming news sites in rejection of the decision. A petition has also been created to “Save OpenIV”. While petitions and posts of complaints may not do much, it shows the overwhelming support the modding community has. The petition currently sits at over 16,000 signatures and it is still rising.

Not satisfied with providing an e-signature, people have also taken to Steam, the PC gaming platform, and begun to leave negative reviews for the game. At the time of this post, around 15,000 people have now left a negative review over the last few days, moving its category to “Mostly Negative”. We don’t want to encourage this, but the weight of this decision is evident.

Several YouTubers, some personally affected by the decision due to the impact it will have on their content, have also filmed supportive videos – BloodLust180, GTA Wise Guy, NerdCubed, Jim Sterling

So where do we go from here?

There’s not a whole lot we can do right now other than speculate about the fate of modding and what this means for every fan in the community that uses mods for good or positive reasons, as well as Rockstar’s stance on modding in the future. There are some contradictions between Rockstar’s statement and the Cease and Desist order details, but with everything so vague it’s hard to say; this surely doesn’t mean that modding is now “illegal” as many gaming news sites have headlined. Rockstar, in their statement, say they are working on making sure people can continue to have creative freedom in singleplayer, so we can only assume they still support modding and the attack here is on cheaters and hackers, but there are still many questions about what action is being taken in regards to this; perhaps this is how it has to be until they’ve successfully shut them down.

If leaking content is also a significant issue here and Rockstar wants to eradicate this to future proof upcoming games like Red Dead Redemption 2, then it appears that OpenIV and the modding community has become the innocent victim amongst a wider community that uses these kinds of tools only for selfish reasons, and Rockstar are within their rights to shut down anything that enables this to happen as unfortunate as this sounds. Further statements from Rockstar or Take-Two would help our understanding, but it’s possible that this will not happen and we may have to wait it out and see if other popular mods such as ScriptHook are affected down the line.

For now we can only pledge our support to the developers of OpenIV, fellow modders and creators from the community. We are against cheaters, the few who ruin it for the many.

Feel free to show your own support by sharing your thoughts about what modding means to you and our community, make a comment in the OpenIV topic to keep it relevant, sign the petition if you choose, and watch and share the videos of your favourite creators from around the community in support of their work.

Comment on GTAForums

The post The People vs Take-Two: OpenIV mod shut down appeared first on GTANet.com.

You can check out these screenshots below, straight from GTANF’s article (click for full size versions):

You can read the full interview and check out a couple extra screens at their website below, and find a link to the mod’s discussion thread as well.

Interview with the Liberty City in GTA V mod team + Exclusive Screenshots [in French]

Comment on GTAForums

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Head on over to the topic at GTAF for more.

The post State of Liberty mod requests assistance appeared first on GTANet.com.

The new features include an account system, so that uploaders can login to manage their existing uploads, as well as rate and comment on other uploads. The account system also allows for many additional features, such as statitics and profile information. Further information is available in a news post on the site itself.

Visit the new DYOM site

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