Rockstar buys the makers of the GTA Online FiveM mod it banned 8 years ago

pcgamer.com:

In what may be a portent of things to come in Grand Theft Auto 6, Rockstar Games has acquired Cfx.re, the maker of the FiveM  and RedM multiplayer customization mods for Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2.

«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 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, particularly through the creation of dedicated roleplay servers,» Rockstar said in a statement. «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.

»By partnering with the Cfx.re team, we will help them find new ways to support this incredible community and improve the services they provide to their developers and players."

The FiveM and RedM mods open the door to multiplayer experiences that go way beyond the normal limits of GTA Online and Red Dead Online. FiveM, for instance, enables the use of custom cars, maps, weapons, and other content, and also allows for dramatically increased player counts. That's made the FiveM mod an essential part of the GTA Online RP (roleplay) community: As we noted earlier this year, the mod had a peak of nearly 270,000 concurrent players in February 2023, almost double the number of people playing unmodded GTA 5 on Steam.

GTA RP, as the name suggests, is all about immersing yourself in specific roles in the Grand Theft Auto world that typically exist outside the usual cops-and-robbers gameplay. It might sound a bit mundane on the surface but former PC Gamer man Joe Donnelly enjoyed raucous, occasionally bizarre adventures on RP servers as a cult leader, a paramedic, a lawyer, a tailor, the