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Last week, Rockstar banned a number of Grand Theft Auto V players associated with the "FiveM" mod, which offers players an online playspace separate from the game's official "Grand Theft Auto: Online" mode. Yesterday, a Rockstar representative told Ars that the bans were made because the mod is "an unauthorized alternate multiplayer service that contains code designed to facilitate piracy."
That statement got us wondering: Is a mod that merely provides online gameplay on alternate servers really on the same level as simply making an unauthorized copy of a game? The answer, as it turns out, depends quite a bit on what you mean by the phrase "facilitating piracy."
“It does not behave like a crack”
"FiveM is not a crack for GTA V nor does it actively try to facilitate piracy," said Qais Patankar, who goes by qaisjp online. While Patankar didn't contribute code to the FiveM mod directly, he says he was caught up in Rockstar's bans for promoting the mod through online channels like Reddit.
Patankar did concede that FiveM does get around the "GTA V launcher," which usually gates the game's content behind some digital rights management. Despite this, he insisted that the mod doesn't help users get unpaid access to either the single player (SP) game or the traditional Grand Theft Auto: Online mode. "[Running] FiveM with whatever copy you have doesn't act as a gateway towards the SP or GTA:O portions," he said. "Even with a legit copy, I can't open FiveM and end up in GTA:O or SP."
Patankar argues that those behind FiveM shouldn't be penalized just because the mod fails to check if the underlying game is a legitimate copy. "Whilst the mod doesn't prevent people who have illegally obtained the game to play FiveM, it does not behave like a crack: [it doesn't] bypass the verification system so that you can play the game without paying," he said.
Footage of an early FiveM build that allows multiple players to wander around the GTA game world together.
Furthermore, you still need to log in to Rockstar's online Social Club account to use FiveM, Patankar said. That means that the mod's makers, who have had their accounts banned, ironically can't make use of their own creation anymore (most people who have simply used FiveM don't seem to have had their Social Club accounts affected en masse as of yet).
While Rockstar's stated policy does ban "online" mods (as opposed to mods to the single-player game), Patankar argues that FiveM shouldn't be targeted by a policy designed to prevent cheating in a centralized playspace. "There's different ways you can 'spin' this," he said. "FiveM is a mod that works online, but it doesn't modify anything in the [core] online experience. It does mod online code, and it does utilize online things, but it does not affect [GTA:O]."
Even with all those caveats, you could still argue that FiveM helps "facilitate piracy" simply by providing an alternative to the standard GTA:O mode. Cracked copies of the core GTA V generally only work in single-player mode, and these will be detected and blocked if you try to log in to GTA:O. With FiveM, though, players can get some sort of online GTA experience with a cracked copy of the game even if it isn't on the "official" servers. That's probably why the mod is being promoted online under thread titles like "cracked GTA Online working" and videos titled like "How to play GTA V Multiplayer for free!!"
Patankar said he sympathizes with that argument somewhat. "Indeed, Rockstar has spent a lot of time and money on the game, and using FiveM gives [pirates] an experience... that they would not get with their cracked copies," he told Ars. "However, FiveM doesn't [distribute] any of the original game files and therefore isn't sharing content that FiveM [doesn't own]... The mod isn't for pirates, it just works for pirates."
A sturdy legal framework
Rockstar didn't respond to a request for comment on these issues, simply referring us to the official statement quoted at the top of this article. But Law of the Game blogger and attorney Mark Methenitis said that Rockstar probably has a couple of valid legal claims against the mod makers for "facilitating piracy." The first is just a straightforward violation of the Rockstar license agreement, which gives the company wide latitude to prevent any user modifications they don't like (and which is bolstered by court precedents such as the WoW "Glider" case).
Rockstar could also argue that the mod goes against the DMCA's anti-circumvention language, under which workarounds for "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work" are prohibited. "There's a pretty clear argument to be made that this is circumventing the measure to control access to GTA Online," Methenitis said. "Though a trial might get into some pretty nitty gritty technical details to determine what 'access' means in this context. It's also hard to say how the reverse engineering exemption might play in here. Considering the main [license-based] infringement claim is a slam dunk for violating the license, the DMCA claim may not be worth the time."
Regardless of the legal merits, Patankar is somewhat miffed that his ban applies not just to Grand Theft Auto V but all games that require a Rockstar Social Club account, including a barely touched copy of Max Payne 3. Methenitis says this kind of collateral damage, affecting access to unrelated games, is almost definitely covered under Rockstar's Social Club terms, but it has never really been tested in a court of law.
"Taking this to a higher level, I do imagine someone might seek recourse if, say, they were banned from Steam and lost access to their Steam library worth $1,000 or $5,000," he said. "This is likely one of the coming major issues in digital distribution, particularly as people continue to amass more and more digital library value."
"We've already seen similar questions in the case of how to divide a digital library in divorce, or how to handle passage of digital goods after death," he continued. "Ultimately, though, unless someone pushes the issue with Rockstar (and given the value in question, I'm not sure anyone will), it's a bit hard to say where the line really is."
In the end, though, there's not much that those supporting FiveM can do about Rockstar's decision to shut them down aside from protesting loudly on the Internet. When you make a mod, it's ultimately the creator of the original game that decides what's all right and what crosses their personal line.
