Opinionated concerns about the state of FiveM

[RSM.GG]

Keeping it to the point…

1. Server browser

It’s just bad. There are many reasons for this and it’s hurting most servers on the platform.
You can read more about why this has come to be here where I’ve discussed the biggest pain points and have also proposed a solution (not a perfect one by any means) for this.

This is closely related to the last point in this thread.

2. Compliance Communication

The lack of communication for PLA and compliance in general is making this platform look like it’s ran by some shady offshore company in the Maldives:

• Tickets are automatically closed after a month of inactivity and often go without a reply.
• DMCA takedown requests are ignored (judging by the two that we submitted back on the 16th of April that still have had no response), and there’s no communication for when more information is needed on a takedown request, it just gets silently treated as an invalid request.
• Very little resources have been assigned to enforce the PLA which is something that Rockstar was very keen to make out to be a huge deal back when the PLA changes initially took effect.
  • To be clear, it is a huge deal, but it’s not currently being treated like one. It needs more resources.

See related points 4 and 4b below for more.

3. Server Builds

There’s not been a new recommended (or even “optional”) build since January 2024 which is just abysmal.
Are any of the recent builds even considered stable or is this due to negligence, laziness or because something else is in the works to replace this system?

4. PLA: Enforcement

Despite all of the publicity and fallout surrounding it, the PLA is still not enforced fairly.

Pinned servers are selling virtual currencies which has been directly reported time and time again in private communication channels with Cfx.re and to this day no action has been taken. If it’s stated in the PLA that it’s not allowed, then it should either be enforced as such or it should be appropriately removed from the agreement.

The ball on this one was dropped harder than a block of soap in a prison shower and still to this day there’s been no effort to actually scale with the problem, whether that be by hiring more compliance team members or implementing automated enforcement solutions.

4b. PLA: Compliance Incentives

There are no incentives for servers to follow the PLA other than the now-expired fear of being blacklisted.

The backlog is so long now and too many complaints have been made about it being so long that server owners don’t have any fear of being blacklisted anymore, so copyright infringement is more rampant than ever.

An example incentive to follow the PLA would be to publish monthly or quarterly compliance updates detailing how many servers were blacklisted and given warnings, in a community pulse-like format.

5. Stale UGC platform evolvement

There have been no major changes to any of the key aspects of delivering a UGC platform, and because of that, the community is suffering.

An example change here would be improving discoverability for servers and to stop leaning so damn hard on roleplay for every single marketing piece that goes out.

I’m of course biased here because I run a server that has been strictly no-roleplay since 2019, but I feel like we should be embracing the platform for what it is, not for the thing that has dominated it and shut most other things out for the last 5 years.

The magic of this platform and why it took off the way it did has always been to do with the possibilities of creating something new. But these days, all of those new ideas get pushed to the bottom of the list and are left to stagnate because there’s no help from the platform to make them known. It’s left entirely to the server developers, who usually want to spend more time developing something fun and novel and less time marketing it on their own accord and personal wealth.

We now live in a time where accessibility is key, and if there’s no accessibility then people will struggle to find what they’re looking for. The server browser is the gateway to the platform and it’s old, stale and not optimized for what the platform ultimately needs.

As a side note, Roblox got popular because it gave people an avenue to discover new things, not because it kept pushing the same thing over and over again. Roleplay will eventually die out and the platform will go along with it when all the unique content that was created by passionate server developers (who were abandoned by the platform up to this point) has been buried and long forgotten about.

[Gogsi123]

Absolutely agress with (almost) everything that’s been shared here.

I was shocked to hear from multiple people that DMCA requests are being ignored. I’m not a lawyer but it is my belief that processing DMCA requests “expeditiously” is required by Section 512 to maintain Safe Harbor status, losing which would be a huge liability.

PLA enforcement is selective at best. Aside from being very slow, at the time of writing there is one pinned server openly selling virtual currency, and at least one server consistently in the top 10 on the server list is using a poorly stolen map from GTA IV. Both of these have been reported many times for over a year and seemingly ignored. You would think such prominent examples of PLA violations would be taken care of with priority. I understand that it’s a “small team” but that excuse becomes moot when your parent company is (figuratively) printing money in the billions.

I don’t really see what could be done from a discoverability standpoint on a large scale. There are small attempts to push for non-RP content, like the pinned servers and the new Community Spotlight, but these will only ever cover like 10 servers at most. I don’t necessarily think that non-RP servers should be pushed more either. I just feel like the platform is too large at this point to have good discoverability and it’s sadly also not a good fit for a social-media style recommendation algorithm. It’s a shame that servers have to resort to paying for promotion but I guess Upvote Bursts are a decent attempt to have something that’s not prohibitively expensive. I just read your suggestion thread too, which seems like another good step to take.

[Noor_Nahas]

I was shocked to hear from multiple people that DMCA requests are being ignored. I’m not a lawyer but it is my belief that processing DMCA requests “expeditiously” is required by Section 512 to maintain Safe Harbor status, losing which would be a huge liability.

You could probably successfully argue that they don’t have this status if you took this to court, but that’s what this is dependent on. Someone would actually have to start legal action following a DMCA request.

I imagine people who hold valid DMCA-related requests for content likely get quick responses when reaching out (if not from CFX staff, probably when they follow up with Rockstar legal) but unless someone is taking action on IP violations of their own IP, you’ll probably not see quick enforcement.

Rockstar would be the party that’s being “injured” by GTA 4 maps being used in FiveM, so technically it’s up to them to speed the process up there.

I agree with OP just saying why a lot of IP infringmenet never seems to be actioned.

[RSM.GG]

I don’t really see what could be done from a discoverability standpoint on a large scale. There are small attempts to push for non-RP content, like the pinned servers and the new Community Spotlight, but these will only ever cover like 10 servers at most.

I can understand that point of view, but there are things that could be done to improve it, like moving the server browser one step deeper into navigation and covering it with server gamemodes/categories which would expose browsing players to more experiences on the platform (as described here).

Pinned servers were great at first, but quickly lost value when they stopped getting rotated as often. Nowadays we’re lucky to see a couple of changes (one server removed, another added) once a year. It’s not something that has scaled very well if at all with the growth of the platform.

Community spotlight is a part of the solution, not the solution. Just like pinned servers, it only goes so far, which is why I believe the server browser being turned onto its head with the changes I’ve proposed (here) will be a good thing long-term so long as it’s maintained.

I understand that it’s a “small team” but that excuse becomes moot when your parent company is (figuratively) printing money in the billions.

Exactly. Big money behind a platform with very little resources, it almost seems intentional that things are this way.

As I said in the post, they can either put more money into staffing the compliance team or they could write some automation to counter the abuse, like automatically flagging and sending notices to servers when keywords in content (ytd’s more importantly) are detected, and then automatically replying and closing all tickets opened against the server when action has been taken against it.

This alone would likely solve a good chunk of the backlog but there has clearly been no intent of doing that.

[AmericanBiker]

Just Why ? Lead the way tho… All This IP rights talk, coming from someone that has a Toyota logo on a car as his loading image… … come on man, lay off the coffee.