The Grand Theft Auto franchise is one of the most successful video game franchises the world has ever seen. To this day, GTA V still brings in, on average, around 100,000 daily users on the PC version despite the game being released over a decade ago.
A major factor in Grand Theft Auto Five’s continued success has been the modding community’s emergence, specifically one company that has provided an outlet to hundreds of thousands of players looking to get more out of the open-world juggernaut title. Cfx.re, creators of the platform FiveM, were so successful in reigniting GTA V that they’ve not only been contracted by Rockstar recently, but are now teaming up with the creators to release the first official Grand Theft Auto modding tool.
In a post to their modding platform FiveM, Cfx.re announced the first ever modding tool for GTA V with a “coming soon” release date, promising new compatibility with the multitude of file types used by the modding community to level up what players can get out of the title. Now that PC players have access to the “full” version of Grand Theft Auto Five, also known as the “Enhanced” version, Rockstar has decided to open the flood gates on one of its most controversial topics, modding.
See, mods in Grand Theft Auto existed long before GTA V came to be. A sandbox game already full of such endless possibilities and avenues for creativity was bound to attract the modder demographic. Even within the early days of PC GTA Online, many players can recall seeing/dealing with a troll modder running around with god mode on, spawning in millions of dollars and experience, blowing everyone up with orbital cannons on repeat, or just straight crashing the servers to name a few.
However, these escapades were on the lowest rung of the GTA mod ladder. Rockstar responded like any company would, by banning away players manipulating their code illegally. Even during the initial rise in popularity of the FiveM application, there were credible fears that Rockstar may issue takedowns on the platform for violating the games’ terms of service.
What no one, including Rockstar, expected was for FiveM to takeoff in the way it did. Thanks in large part to the emergence of Grand Theft Auto Roleplay servers, hundreds of content creators have made a lucrative career and community off of FiveM and modded GTA at this higher tier, which in turn brought in a new surge of attention and players to GTA V that Rockstar couldn’t ignore or afford to stop for that matter.
It got to the point where in August 2023, instead of crippling Cfx.re, Rockstar made headlines by purchasing the company responsible for the biggest modding location for GTA ever. That acquisition happened over a year-and-a-half ago, so why does Rockstar and Cfx.re want to release their official mod tool now, especially with GTA VI potentially right around the corner?
Rockstar’s Big GTA Online PC Problem
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past week or so, you may have missed a huge update to GTA V on the PC. See Rockstar has always leaned towards its console playerbase when it comes to content and QOL updates to Grand Theft Auto Five and more specifically, GTA Online.
For years, exclusive content, including missions, cars, and even changes to the map, was restricted to the PC version of GTAO. That was until Rockstar released the full console version of GTA V onto the PC platform, known as the aforementioned Enhanced version. The older model is now known as “Legacy GTA V.”
While this change opened a whole can of worms with the normal GTA V playerbase thanks to there being no way to port over your GTA Online character to the new enhanced version, this is not the problem we’re referring to.
When Rockstar split the PC version of Grand Theft Auto Five into two separate entities, they effectively created a whole new title platform in the modding space as well. As Cfx.re describes in the post shown earlier, the potentially millions of custom assets created on their platform currently do not work on the Enhanced version of GTA V. This could be a massive problem for Rockstar’s current most popular destination for GTA V, as no one playing through FiveM will choose to play their latest update.
In response, Rockstar and Cfx.re collaborated to bring the tool GTA players have waited arguably a decade for, an official modding tool for Grand Theft Auto Five. There’s already been rampant speculation that GTA 6 will have its own custom mod menu, and this addition to that title’s precursor only adds further fuel to the fire. Simply put, we’re all watching the future of the Grand Theft Auto franchise with Rockstar’s first big step into modding their games.
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- Released
- September 17, 2013
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ due to Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol
