The modding community for Grand Theft Auto V on PC is a vibrant one. Fans are always creating new content for the game's single-player mode, content which developer Rockstar openly endorses.
But when it comes to mods involving GTA Online, Rockstar takes a very different stance. Rockstar bans users who attempt to mod the online portion of the game with the goal of "protecting GTA Online against modifications that could give players an unfair advantage, disrupt gameplay, or cause griefing." Some prominent modders are now saying they've been unfairly banned after creating an alternate to GTA Online that runs off dedicated servers and doesn't interact with Rockstar's online ecosystem.
Called FiveM, the mod is a "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."
Because the mod uses dedicated servers, it doesn't interfere with the thousands enjoying GTA Online's vanilla multiplayer mode. That, however, hasn't prevented some of the mod's creators and those associated with the project from having their Rockstar Social Club accounts banned. Since players must log in with their Social Club account to play the game, anybody with a banned account has been effectively permabanned from Grand Theft Auto V on PC. Not only that, but other Rockstar games for PC, like Max Payne 3, also use the Social Club, meaning users banned in one game are banned across all of Rockstar's titles.
Those banned insist they are not violating the game's terms of service and claim Rockstar is "trying to stifle the modding community." Banned user qaisjp took to Reddit to voice frustration over the issue.
"I think I have lost complete hope in Rockstar, I never expected them to go this far to try and get rid of a mod," qaisjp writes. "We didn't make hot coffee! This sounds advertisey, but it's infuriating to see cheaters in GTA Online, and then you get banned for contributing to a project that will get rid of cheaters more efficiently than GTA Online."
So far Rockstar hasn't issued a statement on the matter. You can check out some of GTA V's single-player mods here.
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