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.