After years of silence, Rockstar has finally laid out an official stance on the mega-popular GTA RP servers, and while it broadly sounds like good news, fans are still feeling trepidatious.
If you're not familiar with GTA RP, they're essentially modded servers that let players get into GTA Online in ways not officially supported by the game itself. You could run a store, be a cop, or watch the world burn alongside 999 other players while playing the guitar. These servers are wildly popular, thanks in large part to their success among major streamers.
But Rockstar and parent company Take-Two have had an uneasy relationship with mods over the years, generating headlines after shutting down seemingly innocuous tools like OpenIV. They issued a statement in 2017 essentially giving the okay to single-player mods (with numerous exceptions), but that's left the tools used to make GTA RP happen in a bit of a gray area.
Now, Rockstar says in a new support article that it hopes roleplay servers "will continue to thrive in a safe and friendly way for many years to come", and runs down some rules similar to the ones issued for single-player mods.
Essentially, RP servers cannot make use of unrelated IP - so no more playing as Superman. That includes "other Rockstar IP," so don't expect to be playing as John Marston in an RP server, either. You also can't sell loot boxes or in-game currency, profit from corporate sponsorships, or integrate cryptocurrency.
That last point might be the most relevant, as we're seeing more and more GTA RP servers - including some of the most popular - profiting on sales of in-game cash and loot boxes. Those servers have largely gone under the radar, but we may soon see Rockstar start to take action against them now that the studio has laid out clear rules for what is and isn't allowed.
Rockstar also explicitly prohibits "making new games, stories, missions, or maps," just as it does in its rules on single-player mods. That more or less prohibits any sort of new content appearing in a mod, though given how that same rule has been applied for single-player mods, it's likely to be selectively enforced.
The statement's legalese concludes with a reminder that Rockstar and Take-Two are not endorsing or approving any third-party projects, and they could change their mind at any time to take legal action against any given mod.
GTA 6 is still a long way away, but it's already time to speculate on whether it will take any inspiration from RP servers.
