Some game publishers are only too happy for modders to dig into the inner workings of their games. For such publishers, modders are an invaluable—if sometimes frustrated—resource. They discover and fix bugs, they provide new content that keeps players involved for years after release, and occasionally they band together to create projects that can rival the original game in scope and ambition.
In case you’ve found yourself wondering whether Rockstar Games falls into this category, the company’s new Mod Guidelines—updated earlier this month as Grand Theft Auto VI looms ever larger on the horizon—provide a pretty definitive answer. No. No, Rockstar is not down with the mods.
Some of the guidelines are pretty standard: don’t steal other people’s creations, don’t use Rockstar IP to promote your mods or imply that they’re somehow officially affiliated with the company, don’t do naughty things with multiplayer. Others, however, place pretty stringent restrictions on modders. The item entitled “Respect Our Games,” in particular, seems to put the kibosh on basically any story-based mods—it demands that modders “do not expand or modify Rockstar Games’ official storylines, plots, missions, characters, or other elements of our established continuity.”
Total conversions like Tale of Two Wastelands, which ports Fallout 3 into Fallout: New Vegas to take advantage of the latter’s slightly newer and more capable version of Bethesda’s Gamebryo engine, are also off the table: “Do not make mods that combine maps, locations, characters, storylines, in-game assets, or other IP from one Rockstar Games title into another title.”
In addition to prohibiting mods that promote self-harm, contain pornography, etc., the “Do Not Harm the Creator Community” item also makes one curiously specific demand: “Do not engage in or promote conflict roleplay or military simulations depicting real-world armed organizations.” There’s probably a legal reason for this, but it seems like a curious restriction for a game whose entire franchise involves a whole lot of conflict roleplay with armed organizations that look awfully like real-world police forces.
Finally, there’s the question of paid modding. Rockstar doesn’t rule this out entirely, but it does demand that “you may only monetize your mods via digital storefront providers approved by Rockstar Games and in compliance with all applicable laws, rules, and policies.” Those policies are set out in the game’s Creator Platform License Agreement, which was also updated recently and makes for an interesting read. The agreement is pretty clear that you can’t “exploit the rights granted under [this agreement]” for “real-world monetary value including fiat currency, assets, crypto currency, or crypto assets.” It provides a long list of other prohibited methods of making money from mods, and also specifies that “this list is not exhaustive”—shout out ejusdem generis—and that “[Rockstar] reserve the right to modify or amend the list at any time.”
So what can you do? The agreement discusses the creation of custom servers, operated by Rockstar and/or third-party operators to provide “a customized or modified version of one of Rockstar’s games or game modes.” Such servers can incorporate marketplaces, and those marketplaces can allow server admins to purchase custom content for use in their custom servers. And… that’s it, as far as we can tell.
This means that if you want to mod Grand Theft Auto VI in any manner more ambitious than adding a new gun or something, you should probably do so in the privacy of your own home. The policy also raises some interesting questions for existing mods for previous titles: the new Mod Guidelines and Creator Platform License Agreement apply to all of Rockstar’s games, not just GTA6, and even a cursory glance at Nexus Mods reveals mods that almost certainly violate the “do not expand or modify Rockstar Games’ official storylines” provision of the Guidelines. Whether Rockstar will seek to enforce these in respect of mods for its older games, or just for its upcoming flagship title, remains to be seen.
