Apparently unhappy with the gameplay of the GTA Online on PC, a bunch of enterprising modder folk decided to take a stab at doing their own take on Rockstar’s popular Grand Theft Auto V multiplayer mode, allowing them to host their own custom game mode variants as a result.
The somewhat expected upshot of such initiative however, is that Rockstar have slapped a big six star wanted rating on the team and subsequently lowered the ban hammer on not just their Grand Theft Auto multiplayer accounts but any game released by the prolific developer in the future.
Basically, the mod allows players to connect to dedicated servers where, according to its creators, FiveM, is “a planned multiplayer modification for Grand Theft Auto V which, much in the lines of popular modifications in the past, offers an advanced multiplayer environment for people to play on dedicated servers with user-made game modes.”
The most recent example of the group’s progress with the mod comes from the video below which was created back in May.
Seemingly, guilt by association also appears to be part of Rockstar’s scorched earth policy in regards to the mod, with Grand Theft Auto V sub-reddit user ‘qaisjp’ recalling how he and other folks who were loosely affiliated with FiveM, also had their Rockstar Social Club accounts fall under the ban hammer:
“It seems that NTAuthority and TheDeadlyDutchi were also banned. Dutchi has used mods before (but a very long time ago) and (as far as I know) NTA has never used single player mods (besides creating FiveM, of course). I found this out today, not too long before I started writing this post.
I am not a developer of FiveM, I am just the mere moderator of the subreddit, but yes, I have some sort of affiliation with the mod. I was skeptical that we were banned (screenshot) for being contributors (in some way) to the FiveM project.
NTAuthority and TheDeadlyDutchi was banned on Thursday as well… surprise surprise. I asked Dutchi what time he got the email… 1:52am. We were banned within two minutes of each other. It was certainly a manual ban. This completely rules out the possibility that I was banned for single player mods – the good news is that Rockstar doesn’t seem to be banning people for just using single player mods. The bad news is that Rockstar is trying to stifle the modding community.”
Crucially, Rockstar Social Club serves as the connective tissue for the Grand Theft Auto V experience, so banning these accounts also has the unpleasant knock-on effect of not being able to play the games that they are tied to; something that will likely also hold true for future Rockstar releases.
For their part, Rockstar Games have been happy to support the proliferation of single-player mods for Grand Theft Auto V but always maintained that mucking about with the multiplayer side of things was a taboo activity:
“We have always appreciated the creative efforts of the PC modding community and we still fondly remember the awesome zombie invasion mod and original GTA map mod for GTAIV PC among many other classics. To be clear, the modding policy in our licence has not changed and is the same as for GTAIV. Recent updates to GTAV PC had an unintended effect of making unplayable certain single player modifications. This was not intentional, no one has been banned for using single player modifications, and you should not worry about being banned or being relegated to the cheater pool just for using single player PC mods. Our primary focus is on protecting GTA Online against modifications that could give players an unfair advantage, disrupt gameplay, or cause griefing.”
To that end, many folks within the aforementioned sub-reddit believe that FiveM is in the clear because their mod doesn’t actually connect or otherwise interact with GTA Online. We’ll have more on this as and when Rockstar Games respond.
