Rockstar's brought them just to shut them down, I'm calling it now. Probably cheaper and more reliable than pursuing legal action for the same result.

Hm. At first I thought this was cool, then I realized both redM and fiveM are fucked now. It’s not going to be a passion project, just another way to siphon money through micro transactions inevitably.

There's no way TakeTwo would let this happen for long unless they get their share.

Prepare for even more GTA "X" as a service content

RIP

uh oh. well, at least it’s open source and the community could fork it if something bad happens

but I’m happy for the team that they get recognition for their work

Rockstar is an example of no matter how long a company makes good content for, sooner or later enshittification will happen. This is basically swimming out into the Atlantic to board the Titanic.

There's a reason I'm not looking forward to Grand Theft Auto VI.

GTA5 has been out for an entire decade now and has been re-released across three generations of systems. The only post-release content released for it has been to the online mode, and GTA Online is about as pay-to-win as it gets.

Bethesda have pulled similar shit over the years with Skyrim, but the difference is that Skyrim is a largely single player experience without pay-to-win DLC. Also, Bethesda have overwhelmingly embraced the modding community whereas Rockstar and Take Two Interactive have sicced their lawyers and private investigators upon any third-party mod creator in a litigious dick-waving contest that would even put the likes of Nintendo and Disney to shame.

Rockstar have also proven themselves incapable of releasing new games, with the exception of Red Dead Redemption 2, which also never saw any further DLC updates and tried to have its microtransaction-heavy online multiplayer pushed in similar fashion.

The only reason Grand Theft Auto has seen a meteoric level of success is because a lot of people (especially in Britain and the USA) have incredibly poor taste in video games and only care if their console can play the latest FIFA/Madden, Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto.

I'm not a huge fan of their games gameplay-wise, but Rockstar is one of the few AAA studios still worthy of respect, IMO.

They committed to changing their toxic, Blizzard-esque company culture, and by all accounts, they've stayed true to that commitment - they've done away with forced crunch time and have one of the most inclusive company policies in the industry, as far as I know.

Sure, their parent company Take-Two insisted on quickly releasing that shitty GTA Trilogy mobile-to-console port, and the upcoming Red Dead Redemption re-release is overpriced, but as a developer of poignant, provocative stories, they've never failed.

They're one of the few AAA studios who still makes real art, not just yearly soulless excretions. It takes a long time and a lot of money to make a huge AAA game, so they've been predatory with their GTAO microtransactions to support that, but I still have faith that GTA6 will be another masterpiece of storytelling.