GTA 5 Modders Banned For Trying To "Facilitate Piracy" on PC

Rockstar has banned a group of modders attempting to create an alternative to the Grand Theft Auto 5's GTA Online multiplayer experience on PC, explaining that it believes the project was designed to facilitate piracy.

The FiveM mod was touted as a "multiplayer modification for Grand Theft Auto V which, much in the lines of popular modifications in the past, offers an advanced multiplayer environment for people to play on dedicated servers with user-made game modes."

Its creators explained: "It builds on the solid multiplayer framework set by the Rockstar Studios themselves ... [and] relies on dedicated servers for connecting players to one another. This eliminates any connection issues that can, will and have occurred in the past trying to connect a session filled with players to one another."

Rockstar's investigations, however, led the company to believe that the mod could have a more nefarious purpose. As a result of this, Rockstar Social Club accounts belonging to PC players affiliated with the mod were banned.

"The FiveM project is an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy," a Rockstar representative said in a statement.

"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."

Suspended Social Club accounts mean the affected players no longer have access to GTA 5, GTA Online, and any other Rockstar or Take-Two games purchased on the platform.

The subject of bans relating to GTA 5 mods has cropped up a number of times since the PC version of the game was released in April 2015. After a period of silence, Rockstar issued a statement regarding the use of mods in Grand Theft Auto V on PC in May.

"We have always appreciated the creative efforts of the PC modding community and we still fondly remember the awesome zombie invasion mod and original GTA map mod for GTA IV PC among many other classics," Rockstar said. "To be clear, the modding policy in our license has not changed and is the same as for GTA IV."

As of August, more than 54 million copies of Grand Theft Auto V have shipped worldwide, according to publisher Take-Two.

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