Rockstar has launched an official mods shop, Cfx Marketplace, for “every server and every player” to hand over their lovely loot (thanks, GI.biz). The news comes three years after Rockstar’s 2023 acquisition of Cfx.re, a Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption modding team, which also runs the roleplay servers FiveM and RedM.
If you’re thinking “hold on a minute” that’s probably because you remember a time when Rockstar and Take Two weren’t so happy about modders: Indeed the publisher accused FiveM of hosting code to “facilitate piracy”, and banned three of the main creators from Rockstar games.
This policy changed in 2022 as Rockstar eventually woke up to how massive, forward-thinking, and potentially profitable the whole modding and roleplay scene was. It then allowed non-commercial roleplay servers, as long as they didn’t interfere with any official services, before moving on to just acquire Cfx.re outright.
The new Cfx.re is a “curated digital storefront” that will offer assets, scripts and maps to players, and will host both free and paid-for content. Rockstar now hopes to give creators a place to share and sell their work, such as props, scripts, maps, “and much more.”
For launch, the team has partnered with a curated list of creators, which Rockstar says it worked with while building the marketplace. Some of the listed mods are free, while bundles can cost several hundred dollars. The “Activities bundle”, for example, includes the likes of bowling, billiards, and bungee-jumping, and will set you back a cool $467.99.
The new marketplace can be seen here, and will inevitably be seen as a dry run for the next iteration of GTA Online. GTA 6 is launching into a vastly different ecosystem than GTA 5 did, and enormously popular platforms like Fortnite and Roblox are arguably Rockstar’s greatest competition: both of which have their own ways for creators to monetise and players to buy.
This is an interesting move by Rockstar! Launching an official mods marketplace could really enhance the gaming experience for players. It’ll be exciting to see how this evolves and what creative content emerges from it.