"Respect our games."

Ahead of the bottomless GTA 6 mods we'll surely get whenever the crime epic finally comes to PC, Rockstar Games has imposed new restrictions on the modding community and, boy, they are tight.

"Rockstar Games is the home of the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, and other titles," the studio reminds us in its mod guidelines, which were updated earlier this month and spread around the internet more recently. "To maintain a fun, creative, and welcoming place for players and content creators, we encourage everyone to keep the following in mind."

The developer's first rule is to "respect our games." That means modders can no longer "expand or modify Rockstar Games' official storylines, plots, missions, characters, or other elements of our established continuity." Modders are also not allowed to combine maps or assets or characters from one Rockstar game with another - Arthur Morgan appearing in Vice City is probably a no-no, then.

"Multiplayer modding is limited to Rockstar Games' official licensed Creator Platform or else as otherwise licensed directly by Rockstar Games," it added. "Do not modify our games to operate on consoles, hardware devices, or other platforms where they have not been officially released by Rockstar Games."

These updated rules also block third-party content from appearing in Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption mods, as well. "Do not use protected elements of anyone else's intellectual property in your mod, including art, characters, music, photos, games, advertisements, brands or logos, real-world locations, etc." The tradition of a modded Shrek showing up in almost every video game in existence may very well end here.

While these guidelines feel like Rockstar is perhaps holding too tight a leash, some of its points are otherwise pretty reasonable. Rockstar won't "tolerate abuse, bullying, threats, or harassment of any kind," for example - fair enough - and mods can't be monetised "unless permitted via Rockstar Games' official Creator Platform."

The full list draws a pretty strict line in the sand, and I can't imagine we'll see nearly the same amount of zany mods for GTA 6 as we have for GTA 5 as a result.

Elsewhere, Twitch's CEO recently let slip that GTA 6 Online might launch next year instead. Rockstar also properly announced its own GTA Online RP server a few weeks ago, years after trying to bury (and then acquiring) the modding team behind it.

Mentioned in this article