From a perspective outside of the gaming community GTA RP, the takeover of Cfx.re by Rockstar, confirmed on the sly by the video game giant via a terse press release, seems to be just one more transfer window movement in the international JV business scene. But make no mistake, because this takeover says much more about Rockstar’s philosophy, and the future of the license. GTAthan what we first imagine.
GTA Online, the multiplayer grail. Or almost.
” Over the past few years, we’ve watched with excitement as Rockstar’s creative community finds new ways to expand the possibilities of Grand Theft Auto 5 And Red Dead Redemption 2, in particular by creating dedicated roleplay servers. To further support these efforts, we recently expanded our mod policy to officially include those created by the roleplaying game creator community. By partnering with the Cfx.re team, we’ll help them find new ways to support this amazing community and improve the services they provide to their developers and players. » Thus Rockstar endorses one of the teams of modding the most prominent of the PC scene. Nothing could predict such an outcome for Cfx.re, because if the group is praised by Rockstar today, it was first hated and ostracized.
When GTA V hit the market in 2013, it felt like a tidal wave. We will not return to the success story of the reissued multi title, which has passed the stratospheric milestone of 185 million copies sold. One of the highly anticipated options of this fifth opus is its multiplayer mode, which Rockstar has been dangling to its fans for very long months. However, when GTA Online is launched, bitterness and disappointment seize the public. Many technical malfunctions spoil the experience, the servers are unstable, some even fail to connect, not to mention an avalanche of bugs and glitches of all kinds… Quickly, internal teams get down to the task, Rockstar makes its mea culpa, and little by little GTA Online is building a nice community of players. To date, 10 years after its launch, GTA Online has, according to SteamDB data, more than 2.5 million monthly players, with the number of fans logging in each day fluctuating between 90,000 and 150,000. All is well in the kingdom of Vinewood Hills.
Cfx.re, this band of guys who are never happy
Despite the success of GTA Online, which continues to this day, some players feel frustrated. The promise of a GTA RPG way is not held. The title is rather successful, allows the creation of a clean avatar, and offers the same feeling of freedom as any GTA canonical. But it’s not enough. Who says RPG, says roleplay, in other words the need for interpretation of a character: the possibility of creating a specific entity, and of embodying it fully. From this point of view, GTA Online does not really meet the expectations of a fringe of players. Never mind, some modders enthusiasts form a team and undertake to create an alternative to GTA Onlinevia dedicated servers, and by “borrowing” the game engine. An adventure called FiveM (for the V of GTA V and the M of Multiplayer). Players will find tools allowing them to create their own experience, more radical in terms of immersion. The sauce takes little by little, the community grows, and gains in visibility. Then in 2015 came the hiccup: Rockstar banned three of the mod maintainers (NTAuthority, TheDeadlyDutchi, and Qaisjp) from Rockstar Social Club, claiming that FiveM was an unauthorized multiplayer service that contained elements that facilitated hacking. It’s the cold shower. Take Two, and Rockstar shut down the servers of FiveM and GTA: MP, another mod with the same intentions roleplay.
Whatever the obstacles, the Cfx.re teams don’t give up, and even redouble their efforts to resuscitate FiveM, renowned by its community. GTA RP (for RolePlay obviously), more complete and immersive than ever. Cfx.re provides its fans with a whole set of tools allowing them to create their own modes, administer their own servers, and define a whole set of rules, from the most logical to the most eccentric, which will govern the life of players within the same server. Called “Federal Laws”, these rules are intended to regulate the roleplayto encourage players to be ever more involved in the life of GTA RPand to make FiveM what Second Life has always dreamed of doing, without ever really achieving it: becoming an alternative second life.
David VS Goliath
At the beginning of 2016, despite a sword of Damocles which permanently hangs above Cfx.re’s head, Rockstar can silence them with a flip of the hand (reverse that looks suspiciously like an army of lawyers in dark suits ), FiveM lives on. Its success is even growing. It must be said that Cfx.re succeeded where Rockstar only did things halfway. Going far beyond offering to be a good cop or a bad ugly, or a bad cop or a nice ugly, according to your desire, FiveM opens the horizon of possibilities to an unimaginable degree. It’s up to you to become a mafia tailor, rescue worker, cult guru, manager of an illegal Fight Club, or even a lawyer. For FiveM fans, diving into GTA RP amounts to discovering what could have been the GTA ultimate. The advent of social networks and content distribution platforms, YouTube, Twitch and others, allow players to GTA RP to broadcast their games, offering increasing visibility to the mod, and to its designers. According to data provided by Cfx.re, and corroborated by various server monitoring tools, GTA RP peaks up to a daily player count of 250,000, nearly double that of GTA Onlineeven though FiveM is only available on PC and has no “official” existence…
From then on, Rockstar’s view of the matter began to change. This community of maniacs of the roleplay generates a considerable number of views on the broadcasting networks, of the order of several tens of millions… Why would the firm go and shoot an ambulance which provides it with enormous publicity, and relays the slightest information concerning GTA, without having to lift a finger? The virulence towards the modders then mutates into a wait-and-see attitude, in the absence of benevolence. In 2018, when Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption 2Cfx.re is still around, and launches RedM, equivalent to GTA RP for Red Dead. Once again success is at the rendezvous.
Between 2018 and 2022, Cfx.re is growing wings: the team is growing, some modders working almost full time on FiveM, constantly improving the development tools, the quality of the servers and their accessibility. GTA RP is gaining more and more visibility, big names in the stream, such as xQc (12 million followers on Twitch) accumulates tens of millions of hours of viewing by broadcasting GTA Vand also a massive amount of content GTA RP. In 2022, ZeratoR launches its server GTA RPRPZ, with the aim of raising funds for the charity event ZEvent, with phenomenal success (more than 4000 hours of stream).
The dizzying numbers of the server #RPZcongratulations to all, some are… VERY ACTIVE let’s say 😀 pic.twitter.com/HA4hFnGxbB
—ZeratoR (@ZeratoR) May 6, 2021
Consecration for Cfx.re
If Rockstar and Take-Two gave free rein to Cfx.re, reveling in the visibility given to their products thanks to these fans, the financial question was not buried for all that, quite the contrary. The announcement of the acquisition of Cfx.re by Rockstar in August 2023, thus integrating the teams of modders at the parent company of GTA is a boon for both parties. First of all, for Cfx.re, it is confirmation that they no longer fear closure or seeing bailiffs arrive at their homes overnight. FiveM is free, alive and well, and will remain so. It’s a victory for Cfx.re, and for the players. Cfx.re will thus be able to access Rockstar’s tools and their financial power, which will allow them to further perfect their own in-house tools. At the same time, Rockstar legitimizes a practice, that of modding, which the firm has long decried. A strong gesture, since the major video game companies have, roughly speaking, only two ways of approaching this phenomenon: pursuing modders, hating to see the content of their games “vandalized” by smart guys, or letting it go, pretending not to see anything. Rockstar sheds light on a phenomenon, even dubs it in a certain way, thus making a very strong political and legal gesture. At the same time, the firm sends a message to the competition: “ here is how we react, and you? What are you going to do now? “. Moreover, it must surely sweeten the image of Rockstar in the hearts of fans of GTA RP. Or not…
As for Cfx.re, Rockstar is well aware that this is a considerable creative force. Power that will for sure be integrated into the development teams of the next big thing : GTA 6. The message sent to the public is clear: not only GTA 6 (whose release is expected no later than March 2025) will come with an online mode but it could benefit from the experience GTA RP. If this is the case, the sixth installment of the license is likely to hit hard with online gaming communities. That said, there is also the question of monetization. Given the success of FiveM and RedM, Rockstar has just acquired gigantic commercial potential in Cfx.re. If the players GTA RP subscribe to a paid version of it, with the “intellectual guarantee” of Cfx.re at the controls, the financial manna which is offered to Rockstar is unimaginable. Whether it’s based on a subscription (like GTA +), on the usual microtransactions or on paid one-time DLCs, it’s an investment of formidable intelligence that Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two have just made.
The amount of the buyout of Cfx.re is not known. However, it can be assumed that some modders will finally be happy to be remunerated for work that they have been carrying out on a voluntary basis for years. As to whether the workforce will be purely and simply absorbed into those of Rockstar, or if the team will keep its Cfx.re name, the mystery remains.