I've been in and out of the GTA modding community for 17 years now, and it feels like there's been a major shift in the GTA modding community toward stifling creativity in the name of protecting creations (the term "mod theft" gets thrown around there) or stifling creativity behind a paywall.

 

I understand that some folks would like to make a small buck or two making models and recouping losses for 3d models that get converted from scratch, but how is any future modeler going to learn how to create something on their own if a majority of models are locked and/or behind paywalls? At this point while I may be considered a GTA elder, I think it's important to highlight that some of the greats in this community started with models that were made by others and adding their own flavor to it. You have to start somewhere.

 

Back in the day when gtapolicemods was still a functioning site, often we would work on other people's things so long as credit was given to the original authors. Now it's become an elitist jungle where new developers are limited as to what they can make.

 

I don't get it.

I've had this conversation quite a few times, and if you ask me, I believe the majority of "mod theft" comes from people paywalling items. There are people and sites who believe it's ok to republish someone else's work purely because they believe mods should be free. While I entirely believe that many more things should be free than what is, I don't condone stealing other people's work. However, you also have people who republish mods for the fun of it.

 

I can understand paywalls for vehicles primarily, as bases of most models can be upwards of $100's of dollars, and let alone 3D modeling for vehicles cost money for subscriptions to said services. What I don't understand is why things like textures are paywalled when I could do the same exact thing if I wanted.

 

What is really annoying is the 3D modeling for clothing components... I've only recently gotten into 3D modeling/converting Sims 4 clothing (with creator permissions, as they seem to be much more lenient and friendly), and I had to learn from them in order to make clothing from scratch. Most female components nowadays, for LSPDFR even, are behind paywalls when I can get the male version free. 

Well here is my POV. We make both paid and free models. The paid models are only for FiveM and are escrow encrypted with CFX's keymaster so it's impossible to steal and resell. This means that we cannot sel these paid models to singleplayer players, and trust me there is a lot of people.

We make models for the Czech community which is notoriously known to steal, rip, dump models. They either dump your server, steal your models with the whole intention to resell them, or convert them to Roblox and resell them there. Ofcourse they got stolen in Roblox too...

We also make free models that we do not put much time and love into. We put these on LCPDFR.com. We started doing this as a way to prevent model theft. If everyone has access to basic "high quality" Czech cars there won't really be a need to buy stolen models from people.

This actually worked, but it also backfired. People started taking lightbars, liveries, wheels etc.. from our cars and they put it on other cars which they then sell. There isn't really anything we can do about this. They also started converting them to Roblox but that's another chapter...

I think that these reasons are why most people do not give out free models. Your stuff will allways get stolen unless you put it on Tebex 🤷‍♂️

scarcity plays a part i think. i mean the game is what like 13 years old now

there just arent as many modders as there used to be, so updated mods are becoming scarcer. rather than a 1000 people all essentially releasing the same or similar mods all at once (basically meaning they're pretty much forced to do it free if they want people to use theirs) we've just got a handful releasing quite different mods, so they can charge knowing there's not really any alternatives for you to go to

i dont mind supporting dedicated modders tho keeping our essential mods updated im happy to throw a dollar or two around when needed. cant really blame them for wanting a lil incentive to keep working, because modding is a lot of work