The Team Behind One of Grand Theft Auto’s Biggest Mods Is Now Part of Rockstar Games

In another announcement from Rockstar Games this week, the storied developer said that it has officially brought one of the biggest mod development teams for Grand Theft Auto 5 into the company.

“Today, we are proud to announce that Cfx.re — the team behind the biggest Rockstar roleplay and creator communities, FiveM and RedM — are now officially a part of Rockstar Games,” Rockstar announced on its website Friday morning.

For the uninitiated, the roleplay community for Grand Theft Auto Online has become an unlikely success story for one of the biggest live service games going today. These modded multiplayer servers provide a bit of structure to the typical chaotic bedlam of the vanilla Grand Theft Auto Online experience. Players who join these servers typically agree to a set of rules that ground the experience in a bit of reality. More often than not, players will immerse themselves fully in the role of their character (think Dungeons and Dragons, but set in modern times).

These servers can vary wildly. There are ones focused on more clean and legitimate tasks such as making a living as a truck driver, dock worker or politician. Others are about living a life of crime by joining mafioso families with other, like-minded players, all while competing with dozens of other rival gangs for control of the city.

Roleplaying servers like Twitch RP, Rage MP, and FiveM itself have become a big phenomenon on Youtube and Twitch, as they provide players and content creators yet another way to make their own fun within Rockstar’s sun-drenched recreation of Los Angeles (and the greater California area).

“Over the past few years, we've watched with excitement as Rockstar’s creative community have found new ways to expand the possibilities of Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2, particularly through the creation of dedicated roleplay servers. As a way to further support those efforts, we recently expanded our policy on mods to officially include those made by the roleplay creative community.”

The acquisition is a notable change for Rockstar, which has a mixed track record when it comes to empowering the mod community for its games. Back in 2015, Rockstar called the FiveM mod “an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy,” in a statement to PCGamesN.

And in 2021, ahead of the release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition, Rockstar infamously forced the removal of popular visual mods that modernized the classic PS2-era games on PC.

Rockstar says it has recruited the Cfx.re team to “help them find new ways to support this incredible community and improve the services they provide to their developers and players.”

In a statement of its own, Cfx.re called the move a huge step forward for the community of roleplayers on PC platforms.

“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!”

Neither Rockstar or Cfx.re said anything about Rockstar’s next game, which will likely be Grand Theft Auto 6. But it would make sense for the Cfx.re team to work closely on implementing its mod's features into the highly anticipated sequel to the most profitable entertainment product of all time.

It’s been a particularly newsworthy week for the typically quiet Rockstar Games. On Monday, the team announced that it would be re-releasing the original Red Dead Redemption on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. THis news however, did not go over well with some fans.