Rockstar has issued a clarification of its policies surrounding Grand Theft Auto Online RPG servers, a move that has caused some consternation among the huge community that plays GTA Online this way, but appears to have been triggered by an isolated server set up to promote a rapper. Yep: take a bow Lil Durk, if that’s your real name.
GTA Online new policy for RPG servers was posted on November 18 and is, as you’d expect, quite lawyerly. It begins by saying that Rockstar believes in “reasonable fan creativity” and that they hope RPG servers will continue to “thrive in a safe and friendly way” for years to come.
It says the things it wants to target and remove from any association with GTA Online are:
- misuse of Rockstar Games trademarks or intellectual property rights (IP)
- importing or misusing other IP in the Project, including other Rockstar IP, real brands, characters, trademarks or music
- commercial exploitation, including the sale of “loot boxes” for real currency or its in-game equivalent, the sale of virtual currencies, the generation of revenue via corporate sponsorships or in-game integrations, or the use of cryptocurrencies or crypto-assets (e.g. “NFTs” )
- create new games, stories, quests or maps
- interferes with our official multiplayer or online services, including Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online.
Most of these are pretty self-explanatory, but number three is almost certainly what triggered this clarification. In October, a press release announced that “Lil Durk fuses music and gaming with latest GTA-based NFT drop”. It said the rapper would be releasing a “Trenches Pass” that gives fans access to a “pre-sale”, which was an NFT that gave exclusive access to a GTA Online RPG server. Apparently there was some sort of loot box element to this pass as well.
This is becoming something of a problem for any game where players can establish their own servers, with Minecraft in particular fighting several attempts to associate the game with blockchain and NFTs. It’s easy to see that people would be confused as to whether a GTA server with NFTs was official or not, and Rockstar clearly doesn’t want people selling stuff off the back of their baby.
Rockstar reportedly forced Lil Durk to shut down GTA Role Play server “Trenches”‼️😳 pic.twitter.com/eMlJCGVjUi20 November 2022
A message posted on social media has announced that the Trenches server went down yesterday after being contacted by Take Two’s friendly lawyers. “It has been brought to our attention that we have been notified [sic] from the legal counsel of Take Two Interactive Software Inc., the parent company of Rockstar Games Inc. We have been asked to cease all operations of Trenches […] We have no choice but to comply with their demands.”
As long as Lil Durk, we barely knew you. The statement says they will try to figure something out with Rockstar and Take Two, but good luck with that.
As far as the wider GTA RPG community is concerned, Rockstar’s policy clarification seems like nothing to worry about. The RPG side of this game is no doubt part of why it has such a long tail, remains a huge draw of Twitch, and it would be counterproductive to go after something that has arguably been a part of the series ever since they started hitting PC . This is essentially about going after those trying to sell things on the back of GTA Online’s success, or implying an association that isn’t there. Because this isn’t chump change: GTA Online makes half a billion dollars a year, though it’s still a hot mess.
