Rockstar: Banned Modders Used Code “Designed To Facilitate Piracy”

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Remember those guys that were banned for making an alternate multiplayer service for GTA V? Here's the reason behind the ban.

“The FiveM project is an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy. Our policy on such violations of our terms of service are clear, and the individuals involved in its creation have had their Social Club accounts suspended.”
 
locking them out of GTA 5 ... including single-player modes.
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And this is why absolutely no one likes always online connections. Whether or not they were up to shenanigans is irrelevant, Rockstar basically said "Yeah your $60 has been forfeit, since you only license games not own them"
 
Ugh. Terrible response. You can't even use the mod without logging into social club... They've already stated it doesn't contain cracks to bypass R*SC. Hell, one of the guys banned was only THE ADMIN FOR THE MODS REDDIT PAGE!! Didn't even have anything to do with the development. Worse yet is that it's a full R*SC ban, so it's not only GTA they're banned from. They're banned from any game (including the single player mode) that use that shitty service. I really hope that if this isn't resolved, the modders decide to add cracks as a major FU to Rockstar.. This coming from someone who preordered GTAV for the PC, and has owned every GTA game since 2.
 
Oniigumo said:
Ugh. Terrible response. You can't even use the mod without logging into social club... They've already stated it doesn't contain cracks to bypass R*SC. Hell, one of the guys banned was only THE ADMIN FOR THE MODS REDDIT PAGE!! Didn't even have anything to do with the development. Worse yet is that it's a full R*SC ban, so it's not only GTA they're banned from. They're banned from any game (including the single player mode) that use that shitty service. I really hope that if this isn't resolved, the modders decide to add cracks as a major FU to Rockstar.. This coming from someone who preordered GTAV for the PC, and has owned every GTA game since 2.
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Yeah, that part I don't agree with. A ban should be from MP of the game they offended (if warranted). Not from all other R*S games including SP.

EULA/ToS badly need some legal overhaul.
 
Yes overhaul is needed but until then if you do not like the TOS or EULA then do not buy/ install the software. If more people ever voted with their wallet things would change, but until then things will stay the same.

Spidey329 said:
Yeah, that part I don't agree with. A ban should be from MP of the game they offended (if warranted). Not from all other R*S games including SP.

EULA/ToS badly need some legal overhaul.
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Sorry that excuse they give still doesn't solve the problem of serious overreaching that this "punishment" is. Did Rockstar contact them and tell them to stop development or voice their opinions to the developers that it might be used as a way to make piracy a reality? If not then IMHO Rockstar is the one that is completely in the wrong here. I might understand them banning the people from multiplayer, but from the single player of every game that links to the Rockstar SC they own? No that is pretty dam unacceptable.
 
Armenius said:
"FiveM" and affiliated words have been banned from use in the game, as well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterra..._existing_crew_was_deleted_crew_names_related

That statement is not enough for me, R*. Please show us exactly how the mod was "facilitating piracy." As far as I know you were still required to sign into the Social Club to play with this mod.
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It does indeed require you to log into the social club ensuring you have a legit copy. If you look beyond this excuse of a ban, it comes down to micro transactions and control.
 
Banning from SP is a step too far (if the ban was even legit)
 
I think this is a good thing. Maybe this will help promote purchasing the game instead of pirating.
I tried the online play for a few weeks, but its basically "a bunch of Trevors running around" its fun for about an hour, then it gets boring.
 
cptnjarhead said:
I think this is a good thing. Maybe this will help promote purchasing the game instead of pirating.
I tried the online play for a few weeks, but its basically "a bunch of Trevors running around" its fun for about an hour, then it gets boring.
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wut?.. did you even read the article?
 
NickJames said:
wut?.. did you even read the article?
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“The FiveM project is an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy. Our policy on such violations of our terms of service are clear, and the individuals involved in its creation have had their Social Club accounts suspended.”
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Yes
 
LurkerLito said:
Sorry that excuse they give still doesn't solve the problem of serious overreaching that this "punishment" is. Did Rockstar contact them and tell them to stop development or voice their opinions to the developers that it might be used as a way to make piracy a reality? If not then IMHO Rockstar is the one that is completely in the wrong here. I might understand them banning the people from multiplayer, but from the single player of every game that links to the Rockstar SC they own? No that is pretty dam unacceptable.
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I think the key word here is piracy.

If the modders code is enabling other people to pirate the game they have violated the TOS and forfeit their rights to the game itself. How can a person that's found to enable piracy of a game be given legal access to it in any form?

Now if Rockstar is hiding behind the piracy claim to justify their actions, then that's another discussion.
 
To add above:

Justify, as in, they just want to stop modders from taking income from their online MP.
 
cptnjarhead said:
Yes
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*facepalm* You read Rockstars "excuse" for the ban. The mod in no way interfered or bypassed the Social Club authentication. You still need a legit copy of GTA5 to play. It was just capable of hosting modded servers seperate from the normal ones.

Modding used to be something everyone did for fun to make a game enjoyable and last longer. I could play the same game for 4+ years because community mods made it interesting and fun. Now a days the word has been associated with hackers, cheaters and pirates and has become taboo. I hate what has happened to it. This is why most games get played for a few months then die off after the initial hype is gone. Rockstar is literally going to destroy itself if they continue down this path.
 
NickJames said:
*facepalm* You read Rockstars "excuse" for the ban. .
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Are you 12? Anyway. You asked if i read the article, and yes i did. The quote is from the article. Forgive me for quoting the article as written, with a quote from the company that makes the game. As for the
The mod in no way interfered or bypassed the Social Club authentication. You still need a legit copy of GTA5 to play.
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None of that is stated in the Article, but hey if it makes your day to *facepalm* me, then have at er buddy, you got me. I'm not sure if i will be able to sleep tonight. :rolleyes:
 
cptnjarhead said:
Are you 12? Anyway. You asked if i read the article, and yes i did. The quote is from the article. Forgive me for quoting the article as written, with a quote from the company that makes the game. As for the
None of that is stated in the Article, but hey if it makes your day to *facepalm* me, then have at er buddy, you got me. I'm not sure if i will be able to sleep tonight. :rolleyes:
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If you had done, literally, 15 to 30 seconds of research - beyond the article - you would realize that you still need to log in to Social Club to use the mod. That's not exactly catering to piracy.
 
SilverSliver said:
If you had done, literally, 15 to 30 seconds of research - beyond the article - you would realize that you still need to log in to Social Club to use the mod. That's not exactly catering to piracy.
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Oh man, i cannot live with myself :rolleyes:

http://www.pcgamesn.com/grand-theft-auto-v/rockstar-bans-users-of-fivem-multiplayer-mod-claims-it-can-facilitate-piracy
In a statement sent to PCGamesN though, Rockstar explained that the mod does in fact breach their terms of service: “The FiveM project is an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy. Our policy on such violations of our terms of service are clear, and the individuals involved in its creation have had their Social Club accounts suspended.”

Despite this, Qaisjp still maintains that “using single player modifications will not get you banned, including the use of FiveM”. Considering the strong wording of Rockstar’s official statement though, it would appear that using FiveM is a potential route to getting yourself suspended. Only the three affiliated users have been affected so far though, so you may be inclined to risk it.
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Oh man, 3 people!... the conspiracy! :rolleyes:
 
I would like rockstar to answer, how does this mod facilitate piracy if you are required to have a legit copy to log into the social club to play it?
 
SilverSliver said:
Talk about a low effort personality. Here you go. You can clearly see that, despite the mod being loaded you still need to log into Social Club to play.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrandTheft...velopers_and_any_affiliated_members_of_fivem/
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Oh man, i really cannot live with myself. :rolleyes:
If you made a little effort, you would see that none of my comments argued circumventing social club, just that i read said article, then commented and quoted said article. If you took 5 little seconds to check the link i posted, you would have seen the link for the reddit article you posted.
low effort personality
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I'm not sure if i can make it through the day :rolleyes:
 
cptnjarhead said:
I think this is a good thing. Maybe this will help promote purchasing the game instead of pirating.
I tried the online play for a few weeks, but its basically "a bunch of Trevors running around" its fun for about an hour, then it gets boring.
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How, exactly, does banning these people from Single and Multiplayer promote people to buy instead of pirate? Bear in mind, the mod had no such indications of piracy (R*' assumed it did because it's a multiplayer mod), and even the moderator for the team's reddit account was banned, who had wasn't even working on the mod to begin with.

So how is this a good thing? If anything, it promotes piracy and/or backlash.
 
Pringle said:
How, exactly, does banning these people from Single and Multiplayer promote people to buy instead of pirate? Bear in mind, the mod had no such indications of piracy (R*' assumed it did because it's a multiplayer mod), and even the moderator for the team's reddit account was banned, who had wasn't even working on the mod to begin with.

So how is this a good thing? If anything, it promotes piracy and/or backlash.
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This is what i read.
From the article.
“The FiveM project is an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy. Our policy on such violations of our terms of service are clear, and the individuals involved in its creation have had their Social Club accounts suspended.”
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The words:
unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy
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That is what lead to my opinion on "hopefully" this will promote purchasing instead of pirating. If the article had mentioned that the mod still required social club log in, than i would have probably changed my wording, but still agreed with the action. So i can see the confusion, if your knowledge of the topic is farther reaching than the article and mine, however this was my opinion on the article given.
I believe that strict and swift action will help promote legal purchase, but thats my opinion. I gave an opinion on the information given.
 
cptnjarhead said:
This is what i read.
From the article.

The words:


That is what lead to my opinion on "hopefully" this will promote purchasing instead of pirating. If the article had mentioned that the mod still required social club log in, than i would have probably changed my wording, but still agreed with the action. So i can see the confusion, if your knowledge of the topic is farther reaching than the article and mine, however this was my opinion on the article given.
I believe that strict and swift action will help promote legal purchase, but thats my opinion. I gave an opinion on the information given.
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No this does not solve anything as this has nothing to do with piracy. In fact, more people are less likely to purchase their games now because of this. So congratulations to Rockstar for shooting themselves in the foot.
 
NickJames said:
No this does not solve anything as this has nothing to do with piracy. In fact, more people are less likely to purchase their games now because of this. So congratulations to Rockstar for shooting themselves in the foot.
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Never said this was a solution, but I see your point.
This only affected 3 people, and im not sure how many people are actually going to even hear about it, could get more play as time goes. who knows.
I do remember people claiming months ago for being banned for single player mods, but that didn't seem to affect sales.
I do not blame RS for trying to protect their IP, but people are going to pirate regardless of what RS or any other developer does.
 
cptnjarhead said:
Never said this was a solution, but I see your point.
This only affected 3 people, and im not sure how many people are actually going to even hear about it, could get more play as time goes. who knows.
I do remember people claiming months ago for being banned for single player mods, but that didn't seem to affect sales.
I do not blame RS for trying to protect their IP, but people are going to pirate regardless of what RS or any other developer does.
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From what I remember the singleplayer mods were trainers that affected offline play (this has since been fixed and most trainers are programmed to work SP only) and those bans were temporary 30 days at most from multiplayer only.

For FiveM they banned a bunch of team members including ones who were only forum moderators by looking at a list of active users on the website and banning them. From what I know these bans are permanent and even effect singleplayer. I remember a time where bans only effected the online portion of your game not the entire game. Not even Steam goes that far with their VAC bans. You should NOT lose complete access to your game for being banned, that's like taking away someones car for breaking the speed limit.
 
cptnjarhead said:
I do not blame RS for trying to protect their IP, but people are going to pirate regardless of what RS or any other developer does.
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How does "protecting their IP" involve banning these people from not only the game in question, but any game associated with their rockstar games social club account including games they bought years ago?

It's clear that they went that far with their ban, simply because they could. Really makes one wonder just how much larger the ban might have been, if they had a broader grasp *shudders*. It's also really sad that people who bought the game in stores or on steam, even those who only ever plan to play single-player, are still under the complete and unwavering control of the Rockstar games social club. So I guess that means when they decide to shut it down some time in the future we're all just screwed?

I pre-ordered my copy of GTAV via steam because I wanted as little to do with rockstar as possible in order to play the game. On release day I couldn't play the game because the very first thing it does when you launch the game via steam is take you right into the social club bullshit. It gave me some error and wouldn't let me proceed further. I called their support and all they could do is make a support ticket for me and say that they will look into it. That wasn't good enough, because pre-ordering a game and then not being able to play it on launch day is bullshit. I went to their social club website and logged in with my social club there to see if there was any issues with my social club account preventing anything from working.

Right after logging in, it had a big GTAV logo/icon on the front page telling me to activate the game so I can play it. OK, so I activate it. It doesn't let me launch the game though because it says I have to do it through steam. OK, so I launch it via steam, except that now it's giving me a different error, saying that I can't activate this copy of GTAV because the key has already been used to activate. Well yeah, I just did it on the social club page... So at that point I had a game that I could neither play via steam or play directly through social club... so much for being able to play a game on launch day that I pre-ordered. The issue wasn't completely resolved until this month (August). I don't plan to ever buy anything associated with the Rockstar social club unless it's <$5 on steam.
 
cptnjarhead said:
This is what i read.
From the article.

The words:
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The problem for me is that, Rockstar have not demonstrated or even explain how does the mod help piracy. Just because they claim so, it doesn't necessarily meant that it is indeed the case. They have yet to provide any evidence to back their claim up.

Players have tested the mods out, and they have shown that Rockstar's DRM still works as usual, it's intact, the mod did not disable anything. It wasn't even meant to be a tool to disable DRM in the first place.
 
SilverSliver said:
Here is an article about bigfoot being an alien entity, and has about as much truth as the FiveM mod circumventing DRM and promoting piracy.

But, someone wrote an article about it. Must be true.
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Oh i see. Now I totally understand your issue with my post, thought process and quoting an article that this whole discussion is based on.

I think this is a good thing
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Meaning: Yeah, they should get the death penalty too!
Maybe
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Meaning: FACT, dont even bother trying to discuss the debate is over.. just like Global warming!.
this will help promote purchasing the game instead of pirating
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Meaning: Obviously they clearly pirated the game, circumvented social club and joined ISIS! because that was all clearly stated in the article.

I should have know that Rockstars banning 3 million gamers, ... wait, i mean 3, and giving this fictitious lie "“The FiveM project is an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy. Our policy on such violations of our terms of service are clear, and the individuals involved in its creation have had their Social Club accounts suspended" just so they could screw over 3 million... wait.... i mean 3 gamers. Is a total conspiracy to destroy the world by an Evil corporation ran by George Bush.

oh the humanity... :rolleyes:
 
captain, s this how military types "argue" with other people?

on topic:
R* gonna R*. never liked these guys and their games, though the very first one was kind of neat. gave up on the second one as soon as I encountered the tank.
 
dgz said:
captain, s this how military types "argue" with other people?

on topic:
R* gonna R*. never liked these guys and their games, though the very first one was kind of neat. gave up on the second one as soon as I encountered the tank.
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I am totally civil with people who are civil with me, but if you get snarky, well... its on!
All i did was give an opinion based on the article as it was written that official statement from RS. But apparently that is not allowed.

I actually enjoyed all the GTA games, im a sucker for sandbox type games.
Why the bad rap for RS?
 
cptnjarhead said:
I am totally civil with people who are civil with me, but if you get snarky, well... its on!
All i did was give an opinion based on the article as it was written that official statement from RS. But apparently that is not allowed.

I actually enjoyed all the GTA games, im a sucker for sandbox type games.
Why the bad rap for RS?
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Honestly, I don't mean to offend but it looks to me that uncle Sam has trained you to shut off your brain a little too well. That is what meant.
 
NickJames said:
It shouldn't be this way. Mods were enjoyed for decades before this always online crap showed up.
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You can mod single player as much as you want. It's just once you mod GTA online they will ban you. You don't have to be online for GTA V single player either, there are ways around that. But fuck it, let's just bitch and moan without even having a clue. I'm curious, do you even own the game?
 
xIronCrossx said:
You can mod single player as much as you want. It's just once you mod GTA online they will ban you. You don't have to be online for GTA V single player either, there are ways around that. But fuck it, let's just bitch and moan without even having a clue. I'm curious, do you even own the game?
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This mod doesn't actually modify GTA Online. It's a standalone mod that runs on it's own on a dedicated server. It doesn't modify anything of the multiplayer game.

In fact, they were not banned for modding GTA online either. Rockstar claim they were helping piracy instead, a claim no one have been able to show to be true, as the mod doesn't circumvent or modify the game's DRM.
 
xIronCrossx said:
You can mod single player as much as you want. It's just once you mod GTA online they will ban you. You don't have to be online for GTA V single player either, there are ways around that. But fuck it, let's just bitch and moan without even having a clue. I'm curious, do you even own the game?
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Seriously? Yes I do own the game, and all previous GTAs before it. I never had an issue until GTA:V began its gestapo level of quality control. They were banning for single player mods during the first month of release before the internet backlash and they started to relax their strict rules but Rockstar is slowly becoming a different kind of company.
 
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