It has been nearly a year since Rockstar Games acquired the entity behind FiveM, the largest online modification platform. FiveM is home to one of the most popular roleplay servers, boasting an average daily player base exceeding 100,000 active players. FiveM, along with RedM—the Red Dead Online counterpart—enables players to engage with others in modified online sessions and worlds, featuring custom missions, vehicles, maps, and more that are unavailable in the original base game.
Prior to the acquisition, Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, attempted to close down the mod in 2015 by sending private investigators to the home of the mod’s founder, known as NTA, citing concerns over piracy.
Rockstar Games has consistently opposed modifications to its games. Their parent company is known for issuing takedown notices for mods that infringe on their intellectual property and has even initiated lawsuits against mod creators who fail to comply.
The acquisition news was a huge surprise to the community and to the founder, who was not involved in the acquisition negotiations from the start. A group of people close to it share their story with us.
In late 2022, there have been confidential discussions with Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive to sell the company. As the acquisition became more certain, the founder, was informed and agreed to finalize the deal and not oppose it. One reason included fatigue from managing the company due to personal and work-related issues within the Cfx.re team.
Fast forward to August 9, 2023, after talks with various Rockstar employees, the acquisition is finalized. The founder sells Cfx.re, which easily generates 1.5 million a month, to Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games for an estimated 20 million dollars. This acquisition ranks their second-largest, following Rockstar San Diego. This acquisition marked a new beginning for the Cfx.re team, with the larger and more influential Rockstar Games taking the helm and alleviating the founder, and his team of the burdens and challenges within the company.
Rockstar Games extended a warm welcome to the entire Cfx.re team, inviting them to join the nearest Rockstar studio to their home or remotely, as Cfx.re had not previously operated from a physical location. Those who chose to work from home received encrypted work PCs and merchandise as a welcome gesture.
Former FiveM Dev
“-it’s very exciting to be linking up with Rockstar after having practically worshipped them for years. Even just talking to Rockstar officials—it was like talking to a celebrity every time. They’re very professional and keep things neat.”
Six months post-acquisition, FiveM’s founder, was fired from Rockstar Games due to multiple irresponsible actions that violated contract terms, including serious complaints from team members and the temporary shutting down of the FiveM platform due to his emotional and mental state. This turmoil resulted in the acquisition payment being halved.
Neptosim in the company led to some workers leaving; it was a continuous company tension of bad vs. the good guys, with each side believing they were in the right. In the final communication to the founder, Take-Two stated that the actions impacted millions of players and damaged Rockstar’s credibility, as they had promised that the acquisition would improve service. The decisive factor was colleagues’ reports of NTA’s behavior being erratic, inappropriate, or hostile at times.
With the founder’s departure, room was made for new changes within the team, including the hiring of new personnel, often friends of friends, as well as individuals from the competing platform AltV due to its similarities with FiveM.
Other persistent conflicts have resulted in a negative work environment, prompting concerns to be escalated to management, with one of the resulting actions being firing long-standing developers.
Former Cfx.re employee
“We were basically treated like shit since the beginning and in the end, they got rid of all of us by putting us in an extremely toxic environment where we had to suffer from major mismanagement, lies on a regular basis, lack of any communication and lack of internal transparency”
“- even despite all this, Rockstar still had an opportunity to handle it properly, but they didn’t.”
Former FiveM Dev
“Hiring activity was slow, I think at this point Rockstar thought we were a bad purchase. NTA obviously is an S-rank talent when it comes to programming and such. I’m sure he’s a legendary name within Rockstar itself, but I think he also pissed off some higher-ups when he complained about how unfairly he was being treated on the CFX forums.”
“FiveM was almost gifted to Rockstar because we wanted some management and some punitive measures for doing nothing alongside more advanced technical goals and ability”
Years before the acquisition, Rockstar was internally developing an experimental project, aimed to rival FiveM. Former developers at Cfx.re, preferring anonymity, informed Focal that the project started in 2021. Ultimately, it was shelved due to numerous factors. As of last year, the project has been revived and is currently under active development.
Former FiveM Dev
“I learned later that they were working on a FiveM-Killer inside of Rockstar. They were given zero sources, zero debug symbols, and zero info, so I’m not sure how they were expected to succeed. The project failed and supposedly died 2 years before we joined. They were supposed to be advising and judging our team and reporting back to Rockstar on what were like. Obviously, they were not impressed. This led to the project being revived”
Their project is a part of Rockstar’s broader vision for the future of GTA Online, which significantly involves user-generated content through new Rockstar’s online proprietary modding tools.
User-generated content (UGC) is not a novel concept in video games; popular titles like Fortnite and Roblox are prime examples of UGC executed well. It contributes to the vibrancy of games by introducing new experiences and opportunities for both users and the company, which no longer needs to create these experiences themselves. GTA Online already includes UGC, like the custom races and jobs created by the players, although not to the extent of UGC in Fortnite.
In early July, Tez2 uncovered a new file within the GTA Online Bottom Dollar Bounties DLC, indicating that Rockstar may be developing a public mission creator that would enable players to create and engage with user-created content.
This is highly likely connected to the new Rockstar project, which, according to sources who like to remain anonymous, is expected to be integrated into GTA Online later this year in early fall, with the next-gen consoles following shortly, although our own sources heard about it, we were unable to verify this. The possibility of bringing it to consoles will also serve as a way to keep the game alive once updates slow down and GTA 6 arrives.
Both projects are being developed internally at Rockstar, not by the FiveM team. Reports indicate that a significant number of workers are dedicated to the project, with early discussions surfacing just under a year ago. It is speculated that the project may serve as a conversion tool from FiveM to the Rockstar modding platform. What their new project is exactly about is unsure. We can only speculate that it will be Rockstar’s approach to bringing UGC to all its consumers and having control over hosting, assets, and, of course, microtransactions.
The Cfx.re team has historically struggled with poor leadership, an inefficient company structure with excessive roles, and manipulative behaviors that persisted even after the company’s acquisition. This led to a reshuffling of the hierarchy, which only resulted in further confusion and conflict due to nepotism and increased power for those in higher positions.
Now, Cfx.re and FiveM seem to be in a stable position with a healthier work environment and new employees replacing those who departed. Yet, mismanagement issues are still present in one way or form, and there seems to be no clear vision for FiveM’s future, especially with the approaching release of GTA 6 and no clear plans for integration. The company’s primary focus appears to be on maintaining and improving FiveM. An anonymous employee has described the project as “directionless” and “everyone doing whatever”, nobody sat down and figured out the next step yet.
The uncertain future of FiveM may be influenced by Rockstars’ bigger vision of UGC and their upcoming online modding platform, which is expected to launch later this year, and will eventually replace the FiveM project.
Rockstar Games has not responded to our request for comment.
GTA Focal 