The terms of service contain the following term (version 3):
No financial profit shall be derived by the Users from any derivative of, or third-party service, User Generated Content, or Game Server for FiveM, the Game Services, or other entities stated in these Terms, except as expressly permitted by CitizenFX.
Which is then explained as follows:
Don’t try to make money off FiveM in any shady fashion. Covering costs incurred from third parties (server rent, product licensing, …) is fine, however any additional profit (including ‘donations’ other than to cover immediate costs or buying assets to convert to UGC) is not.
Now, not only server rent and licensing have costs: development is expensive too; if it doesn’t cost you money because you are developing it yourself, then it costs you time.
Is it allowed for a server to cover development costs using donations/Patreon?
If I’m a solo developer, am I allowed to “pay myself” the time I invested in making FiveM better by creating a new, original server (as opposed to copy-pasting random premade Lua scripts from the forums)?
EDIT: disregard my whole post. I didn’t know that it is in fact possible to make a commercial server using the Tebex platform. Last time I posted on the forum asking about monetization, they told me it was not allowed (before the Tebex thing).