GTA RP mods have been incredibly popular over the past few years, but Rockstar Games was silent on them until recently. Rockstar Games' new take on this popular concept is incredibly important since their parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has been notorious for taking down popular fan mods.
Fortunately for gamers worldwide, Rockstar Games supports modders in their creative ventures. In fact, their current position on this subject will align with how they currently view single-player mods on PC.
There are a few exceptions worth covering down below, especially since there are some GTA RP servers that make a ton of money as it is right now.
Rockstar Games supports GTA RP mods within certain boundaries
The relevant quote from the embed in the above tweet is:
"As such, Take-Two's legal enforcement policy will be aligned with our current PC Single-Player mods policy, with priority in enforcement actions focused on: (i) misuse of Rockstar Games trademarks or game intellectual property (IP); (ii) importation or misuse of other IP in the project, including other Rockstar IP, real-world brands, characters, trademarks or music; (iii) commercial exploitation, including the sale of "loot boxes" for real-world currency or its in-game equivalent, the sale of virtual currencies, generating revenue via corporate sponsorships or in-game integrations, or the use of cryptocurrencies or crypto assets (e.g. "NFTs"); (iv) making new games, stories, missions, or maps; or (vii) interfering with our official multiplayer or online services, including Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online."
Some of these limitations do conflict with some GTA RP mods as it is. For example, it wouldn't be known if something like Buddha playing a character named Lebron James would be an issue with the real-world brand part of these new rules.
Similarly, any server that uses branded characters might be infracting these new rules. It is also not entirely clear if requiring gamers to spend money to access a GTA RP server would violate Rockstar Games' latest mandate.
After all, that would go against the "commercial exploitation" rule, and that's not even mentioning the few GTA RP mods that use cryptocurrency. It is important to note that Rockstar Games has not officially endorsed any particular server and is not known to currently be going after any at the moment.
Enforcement policy
Since the new rules follow the company's take on single-player PC mods, it's worth sharing what Rockstar Games has stated before:
"After discussions with Take-Two, Take-Two has agreed that it generally will not take legal action against third-party projects involving Rockstar's PC games that are single-player, non-commercial, and respect the intellectual property (IP) rights of third parties."
It's very similar to their new mandates. The main difference between then and now is that the new mandate doesn't focus on the single-player aspect since GTA RP mods tend to be multiplayer by design.
Otherwise, respecting IPs and being non-commercial are the two most important traits for modders to consider. Since the new statement only recently came out on November 18, 2022, there haven't been any notable responses from the big roleplay servers just yet.