Rockstar asks modders to please take its games very seriously

On September 10, Rockstar Games released new modding guidelines on its website, aiming to foster a fun, creative, and welcoming environment for players and content creators. The guidelines are primarily aimed at mods for the FiveM and RedM platforms, which Rockstar acquired along with their developers in 2023. Rockstar emphasizes that mods must respect its games: they cannot expand or modify official storylines, missions, or characters, and cannot combine settings or characters from different Rockstar franchises.

Modders are also prohibited from incorporating other intellectual properties or real-world likenesses, and cheat menus or modifications that interfere with the studio's official multiplayer and online services are strictly forbidden. Rockstar considers its official modding platforms as the exclusive licensed home for its community to monetize their mods, and it forbids alternative monetization or commercialization of mods for its games.

While these guidelines are supported by Rockstar's more formal terms of service and platform license agreements, they serve as a standard rhetorical tool for handling egregious cases. If a mod arises that could pose a legal or financial threat to the studio, it can simply remove the offending user-generated content. However, enforcement on platforms the studio does not own is more challenging.

Rockstar can easily remove a mod that breaks its rules on FiveM, but removing such a mod from a third-party site is more problematic. Despite this, Rockstar has taken action in the past, such as sending takedown notices to modding projects in 2021 that reverse-engineered, restored, or reimplemented elements of older GTA games. The company then announced and released its GTA Trilogy remasters later that year.