Transcription:

[Music]
the 5M situation is way more dramatic
than we all thought anonymous insiders
have just revealed the entire story
filled with betrayal corruption
backstabbing and Rockstar’s shady
takeover we’re talking about stolen
money fake developers and even private
investigators showing up at people’s
houses this story is so insane there
could have been a whole Netflix series
made out of it this isn’t just another
modding drama it’s one of the biggest
betrayals in GTA history but let’s start
from the beginning
2014 the year when a developer known as
NT Authority or NTA created the Citizen
MP framework a project that served as
the first step toward custom multiplayer
experiences in GTA 4 allowing players to
create unique game modes and totally
custom content the success of Citizen MP
inspired NTA to push the idea even
further when GTA 5 launched because
let’s be real GTA Online was fun but it
had serious limitations players couldn’t
add custom assets and everything was
locked to Rockstar’s official servers
the potential for user generated content
was clear but Rockstar wasn’t giving
players the tools to truly create
something new and that’s something NTA
wanted to fill with 5M but instead of
making 5M a private developer controlled
platform NTA took a completely opposite
approach making it totally open- source
with heavy community involvement by 2015
5M was already gaining a lot of traction
players were experimenting with new
ideas building insane mods and pushing
the limits of what was possible in GTA 5
but while the community loved it
Rockstar and Take 2 saw it as
competition that they needed to
eliminate that same year Take 2 took
drastic action they banned the accounts
of three key 5M community members
including NTA themsel this was shocking
because up until that point Rockstar had
generally been tolerant of modding they
even supported mods promoting some of
the best ones on their official newswire
as long as it didn’t touch GTA Online
but 5M wasn’t messing with GTA Online it
was a completely separate multiplayer
experience rockstar however had a
different view in an official statement
they claimed the 5M project is an
unauthorized alternate multiplayer
service that contains code designed to
facilitate piracy our policy on such
violations of our terms of service is
clear and the individuals involved in
its creation have had their social club
accounts suspended this statement was
confusing 5m wasn’t designed to support
piracy in fact it required players to
own a legitimate copy of GTA 5 yet
Rockstar treated it as a direct threat a
few months later Rockstar did something
unbelievable they sent private
investigators to NTA’s home demanding a
complete cessation of any 5M related
activity when NTA refused they handed
them another cease and desist letter
while the exact contents of this letter
were never revealed it’s safe to assume
Rockstar was ordering them to shut 5M
down completely but they didn’t stop
there rockstar even sent spies into 5M’s
private chat rooms infiltrating
conversations and later using them as
evidence in legal proceedings in the
court and this wasn’t some legal battle
between two tech giants it was Rockstar
and Take 2 a massive corporation trying
not only to shut down but mentally break
a 23-year-old developer who had nothing
but the player’s best interests in mind
here’s how NTA described the whole
incident so I just got a pair of PIs at
my door claiming to be sent by Take 2
handing me a phone with a person
somewhere in the UK or US or whatever to
discuss how to cease my activities with
regard to Grand Theft Auto at they know
what happened before with Activision and
want to not get the lawyers involved at
this time however they have tested their
legal standing already and are quite
certain of their point and aren’t
willing to accept any solution other
than ceasing my activities under this
pressure NTA was forced to quit all
operations related to 5M however not for
long with 5M down revival projects
quickly popped up the most notable being
5 Reborn and Multif although not as
popular as 5M these projects made it
clear that people didn’t want the
project to die just a few months after
the whole legal fiasco NTA decided to
fight back by joining hands with 5
Reborn and restructuring the project
under the original 5M name however NTA’s
identity was hidden under the disguise
of CFX Collective and the rest of the
smaller team used Elements as their
aliases to avoid legal trouble with Take
2 and it surprisingly worked for years
to come NTA would work on improving the
current condition of 5M adding new
content tools menus and a whole lot more
by 2019 what started as a small platform
supporting just a couple dozen players
had grown to support over 2,000 slots an
incredible achievement for NTA and his
small team of unpaid volunteers but it’s
important to note that CFX.re wasn’t a
big company yet in fact it wasn’t a
company at all nta was still handling
everything alone with only temporary
volunteer help from the community it
wasn’t until mid2020 that NTA decided to
put together a proper team bringing in
developers who had previously helped
with 5M’s development and
troubleshooting but the real downfall of
5M began when two friends Deltanic and
The joined the team with 5M’s team now
growing to five members NTA was finally
able to step back from managerial tasks
handing those responsibilities over to
Deltanic and The However things quickly
went downhill for months the two
contributed nothing no replies no
meetings no progress at all and as time
passed their behavior only got worse by
2021 NTA decided to hire more skilled
developers to push 5M forward this group
later known as the original developers
included LWSS Gotti Thorium and Tabara
meanwhile Zerki and Nimmoa aligned
themselves with Deltanic and The forming
what would later be called the Groot
Gang 5m was now split into two groups
but the worst was yet to come by 2022 5M
was growing up into one of the most
popular platforms every GTA fan wanted
to play and when Rockstar failed to shut
it down by force they decided to do the
next best thing buy out the competition
they reached out to 5M to make a deal
however NTA had no idea instead Deltanic
took it upon himself to privately
negotiate with Rockstar behind their
back at that point NTA had no choice but
to go through with the deal deltanic had
already exposed their real identity to
Rockstar and with NTA already under a
court restriction backing out would have
only led to more legal trouble just take
a look at this conversation between NTA
and Discuse
[Music]
but the most shocking part is that this
entire acquisition deal could have been
a partnership between Rockstar and CFX
instead Deltanic refused Rockstar’s
partnership offer without even
consulting NTA despite everything NTA
found some relief in the idea that
Rockstar’s leadership might finally
bring order to CFX allowing them to step
away from management duties but that did
not happen rockstar put Ethan Hirs in
charge of finalizing the acquisition and
integrating 5M into the company as the
new big boss of 5M Hirs assumed full
control of management but for NTA things
got worse in fact just weeks after
Rockstar took over nta was suspended for
3 weeks due to internal conflicts with
the Deltanic Group it was clear that
Deltanic and his crew had won over Hirs
probably because they had been
Rockstar’s main source of internal
information about 5M and had played a
key role in securing this acquisition
this became even more obvious when Hirs
created this corporate hierarchy within
the company placing Deltanic and his
close friends at the top positions
deltanic himself was given the title of
assistant director of the project
meanwhile Discuse the core developer who
had made massive contributions to 5M and
was practically the backbone of the
entire Redm project was given no
position at all even NTA the original
creator of 5M was brought on as nothing
more than a contractor from the very
beginning Hersh’s bias was undeniable
and as time went on it only became more
apparent after 3 weeks of suspension NTA
came back but shortly after they were
yet again suspended this time it was
over harassment allegations made by the
same group that had been working against
them from the start and this wasn’t a
short-term punishment it was a
3-monthlong suspension that heavily
disrupted the entire team except this
time the suspension never lifted in fact
after 3 months had passed Rockstar
announced that they’ve decided to
terminate NTA’s contract for good of
course it came as a shock and caused a
lot of disruption in the team since no
other developer had the same experience
as NTA after the acquisition 5M was
technically part of Rockstar but the
team wasn’t treated that way even months
later they still had zero access to GTA
5 source code despite now being under
Rockstar’s umbrella to make things even
more frustrating Rockstar’s infamous
2022 security breach had already leaked
the source code to the public yet the
actual 5M developers were still left in
the dark instead of being given the
resources to properly integrate and
improve 5M the team was forced to
continue reverse engineering exploits a
painstaking process that took weeks or
even months to fix which could easily
have been resolved within minutes
however internal conflicts and personal
drama were not the biggest problems for
5M the management had always been rocky
but with Rockstar in control now things
only spiraled further downhill not only
did Hirs dismantle an already struggling
team but Rockstar sealed 5M’s fate by
replacing CFX terms of service with a
new platform license agreement at first
the PLA didn’t seem drastically
different from 5M’s toos but there was
one critical change that turned
everything upside down the way Hirsch
handled enforcement it was unnecessarily
hostile and even unfairly biased the
enforcement team began flooding server
owners with warnings and takedown
threats over the most random brand
related assets but that wasn’t the
actual problem here these takedowns just
seemed more targeted many server owners
reported receiving harsh penalties while
others using the exact same assets got
away without a scratch some servers were
wiped out overnight losing assets that
had taken years to build while others
mysteriously remained untouched the
favoritism was obvious and for many in
the community this was the moment 5M
truly started to fall apart one of the
biggest victims of Rockstar’s aggressive
and unfair enforcement was Rockstar
Mischief or RSM a growing 5M server that
suffered a massive loss of players due
to sudden and selective takedown actions
unlike some servers that seemed to get a
free pass RSM found itself directly in
the crosshairs and its owner Nex decided
to speak up about it and boycott 5M
altogether this wasn’t just bad
enforcement it was favoritism plain and
simple massive servers like No Pixel and
Complexo were left untouched even when
reported to Rockstar’s higher-ups now
this whole tactic resulted in players
abandoning 5M servers and even forced
many server owners to shut down their
projects but why wouldn’t sabotaging 5M
hurt Rockstar’s own image and why were
the biggest servers conveniently spared
from punishment despite openly violating
the toos well it all becomes clear when
we learn that all this time Rockstar was
secretly working on their own project
called Rome or Rockstar’s online modding
engine a platform much like 5M that
would offer players UGC content within
an official Rockstar controlled
environment and apparently Rockstar had
a deal with some big server owners over
at 5M convincing them to jump ship and
bring their entire player base over to
Rome when it launches despite 5M still
pulling in hundreds of thousands of
players daily its overall state was
actually crumbling longtime community
members server owners and fans were
growing increasingly frustrated however
due to Rockstar’s ridiculously strict
communication policies even the team
members who actually wanted to solve
these problems weren’t allowed to
address them publicly things got further
out of control when stolen or cracked
assets were being resold through escrow
with people charging money for content
they didn’t even own however 5M
management did nothing about it every
complaint either went completely ignored
or got a lazy solved tag slapped on the
ticket to make matters worse some server
owners started exploiting bots to
increase their player counts giving them
an unfair advantage over others who had
actually worked hundreds of hours and
spent tons of money growing their
servers organically then came the rise
of fake Upvote services with people
using credit card fraud order
cancellations and stolen accounts to buy
or resell fraudulent boosts upper
Management or the Groot Gang handled
this criticism the worst way possible by
deleting comments banning and muting
community members and doing everything
they could to cover up their
incompetence this endless cycle of
mismanagement laziness and total
disregard for the community took a toll
on the core team the same people who had
worked tirelessly to make 5M and Redm
the massive successes they were seeing
all this a long-standing community
member Viven decided to take action by
writing an open letter it wasn’t meant
to be an attack just a plea for
transparency and actual engagement from
those in charge the post quickly gained
massive traction with countless
community members sharing their own
experiences and almost everyone agreed
with Viven’s points even several team
members joined in including NTA who
decided to speak up about the current
state of 5M and set some records
straight but that didn’t set well with
Rockstar in response to NTA’s public
statement in the open letter Rockstar
cut the payout in half instead of 5M
being sold for 20 months worth of
operating income it was cut down to just
10 months looking at the whole mess
Ethan decided to hire new developers to
try and salvage the situation that’s
when the former Alt 5 team entered
namely Tuxic Ziggger Vector Fabian and
Lyon after some negotiations with Ethan
the Alt 5 team managed to get inside 5M
with Tuxic taking the lead developer
role alongside Nhonium from the Groot
gang and strangely enough these
newcomers were getting paid more than
the original team despite everything CFX
and Rockstar were hoping that with Alt 5
joining things would finally start to
improve for 5M but instead of things
getting better something way worse
happened remember the GTA 5 source code
leak from December 2023 it was widely
believed that Teapot Uber hacker was
behind it the same guy who hacked
Rockstar’s private Slack server and
leaked early GTA 6 development footage
however conversations in this detailed
expose reveal that it was Alt 5 members
who purchased the source code from
someone with access to it using a
middleman for €7,000 they received the
source code through a Media Fire link
which was later leaked to the public
along with the private password of
course Rockstar had no clue who was
behind it at the time the only person
who did know was Discuse who was told
everything by Tuxic himself but Discuse
refused to give him up for friendship’s
sake friendships aside the original 5M
developers never really got along with
the new Alt 5 members the reason for
that is that Alt 5 had been stealing
5M’s code and implementing it into their
own project without permission for years
not only that but they lacked the skill
and deep understanding of GTA 5 and 5M
that the OG team had instead of learning
from them and working together the Alt 5
team sided with the Groot gang and their
behavior became just as careless and
dismissive they started doing things on
their own skipping necessary tests
ignoring security vulnerabilities and
took way too long to act on the most
basic and important things discuse tried
to bring all of this to Ethan’s
attention but instead of fixing things
an argument broke out which eventually
resulted in Ethan kicking Discuse out of
the project without any prior warning to
make matters worse Ethan had his work PC
erased wiping out months if not years of
research improvements and future plans
for both 5M and Red M ethan then tried
to shift the blame onto the CFX.re team
claiming that even the OG5M developers
were unhappy with Discuse and that whole
negativity in the team was all his doing
however that was a pure lie the moment
Discuse was fired the OG team followed
suit the lead anti-che developer was the
first to resign followed by Gotti who
quit just a couple of weeks later
without prior notice and finally Thorium
announced his departure from the team as
well with that the entire original 5M
team the people who actually built it
from the ground up were gone 5m is no
longer the same project that started
back in 2015 everything has changed it
no longer remains an open-source
communitypowered platform it no longer
has a clear direction a passionate team
of developers and it’s heavily
restricted by Rockstar’s policies that
aren’t even fair for all but is Rockstar
really at fault here there’s no denying
the fact that 5M was already a big mess
well before Rockstar even intervened
while NTA is no doubt a legendary
developer they weren’t ready for such a
big management responsibility and
Rockstar seemed like a safe option for
the project to gain some stability
however Rockstar had other plans from
the very beginning they carefully
orchestrated this to take control of
their only real competitor that they
couldn’t shut with the legalities even
after the acquisition Rockstar’s
management has done more damage than
good to 5M and its reputation pushing
players and server owners away from the
platform offering unfair and special
treatment to massive servers like No
Pixel and Complexo in return for their
help with Rome while we can’t put all
the blame on Rockstar it’s clear that
Ethan did have ulterior motives that
slowly destroyed 5M’s team from the
inside it was Ethan’s responsibility to
keep things civil and equal within the
CFX b team after the acquisition but all
he did was play favorites ignore
important issues and get rid of the only
people who cared more about the project
than money and titles for many players
and developers who truly valued its
freedom and creativity 5M is already
dead the only reason Rockstar is keeping
it on life support is to avoid a massive
backlash from the millions of fans who
still love what 5M once stood for but
make no mistake the end is coming and
probably sooner than most people think
with GTA 6 coming Rockstar has likely
already mapped out its plans for Rome
their very own official modding platform
and they won’t be doing it alone they’ve
brought major 5M players like No Pixel
Complexo and others onto their side
ensuring that when the switch happens
they’ll already have a loyal base ready
to jump ship it’s a slow and calculated
takeover one that was never about
supporting 5M but about replacing it
entirely there’s still so much more to
unpack betrayals backstabbing stolen
assets and broken promises but in the
end it all leads to one undeniable truth
this is the end of an era 5m as the
community knew it is gone and Rockstar
is ready to take full control of what
comes next

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aje9Ua7xXyY