“Respect Our Games”: Rockstar's New Modding Rules, Explained

What the guidelines prohibit

According to the guidelines Rockstar published, mods must not:

• Expand or change the official story. In Rockstar's words: “Do not expand or modify Rockstar Games' official storylines, plots, missions, characters, or other elements of our established continuity.”
• Mix games together. No combining maps, locations, characters, storylines or other material from one Rockstar game into another — the kind of project that, for example, rebuilds one game's city inside another.
• Port games. No bringing a Rockstar game to consoles, hardware or platforms it was not released on.

The framing line is blunt: “Respect our games. Rockstar Games creates unique worlds, characters, and stories, which form the official continuity of our games.”

What it means for GTA VI

• GTA VI launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only. Console versions are not moddable in the usual sense, so the immediate effect is on existing PC games such as GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. See PC release date.
• When a PC version arrives, these are the rules it will arrive under. Story expansions and “Vice City in GTA V”-style projects are exactly what the guidelines rule out.
• What is not covered here — whether GTA VI on PC will officially support mods, or tolerate cosmetic and quality-of-life mods — has no word.

The reaction

Much of the community response has compared the guidelines to Nintendo's approach to fan projects. It is worth separating two things: publishing rules and enforcing them. How strictly Rockstar enforces these, and against which projects, is not something the guidelines themselves tell us. Our earlier report on Take-Two's leak takedowns shows enforcement has not always been precise.