Releases Rules and FAQ

The Releases category exists for people to share their creations like scripts, maps, vehicles and more. To keep the category clean and to a high standards there are rules which must be followed. This post is an overview of the rules to follow when using the Releases category.

Releases

Releases are considered a complete product you want to share with others, you are not allowed to open topics to promote sales or entire stores. All releases must follow the Platform License Agreement (PLA) and Rockstar Games Community Guidelines this includes but is not limited to:

  • Releases that contain custom assets or mods that infringe third-party intellectual property (IP) are not allowed. Real-world brands, vehicle, clothing and items designs, and 3D models are generally protectable under trademark or copyright. “De-badging” does not make your asset compliant.
  • Releases containing or promoting violent extremism, graphic sexual content, glorification of hate groups or real-world militia groups, or abuse and depiction of children or minors, are strictly prohibited.
  • Releases should not use third-party encryption/obfuscation or use remote code loading and execution mechanisms to ensure the safety of our users and servers.

Additionally, the following types of releases are not allowed:

  • Resource packs: You may not release resource packs. You should release individual resources instead and mention their external dependencies.
  • Low quality: Releases that are deemed low quality will be removed, see below for more for information.
  • Large asset packs: Large packs of assets such as clothing packs with hundreds of items are not allowed. Release smaller individual packs instead. All the content of a releases should be featured inside the description.

Posting in the Releases category is limited to 48 hours, this means you can only post a new release every 48 hours. You must also be trust level 1 to be able to post your release. For more information about trust levels, please read this article.

Paid releases

We have partnered with Tebex to allow for creators to monetize their work while providing a safe platform for everyone to share and purchase assets. All paid releases must be sold through Tebex and abide to their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) as well as our Platform License Agreement (PLA).

We also provide creators with our Asset Escrow service which allows you to encrypt your work, whether it’s code or 3D/2D assets. For more information, you can read our Asset escrow developers FAQ.

Finally, you must use the ‘paid’ tag on your release topics.

Copyright

When releasing resources and assets, make sure you’re the sole owner of the content. For more details about copyright, please refer to section 5.4, “Responsibility for Your UGC, from our Platform License Agreement (PLA).

For DMCA Takedown notices, please refer to our Platform License Agreement (PLA) section 6 “Content Reporting; DMCA”.

Topic

When publishing a new release, please take the time to present your content nicely; include a comprehensive and well-written description as well as screenshots and/or a demonstration video:

  • List all the assets or features contained in your resource.
  • A demonstration video will always be preferred over images or screenshots.
  • Large Language Models can be great assistive tools, but do not copy/paste the output of your prompt as your description.
  • Do not include misleading terminology such as “Open source” for paid releases.

Always include information about performances as well as details on resources usage:

  • Include general asset file size information (polygons count, textures size, Level Of Detail, and any other information you may find useful to share)
  • Performance indicators for scripts (resource monitor numbers, profiler screenshot, …)

Tags

You are required to add tags to your topic, these help users filter on the content they are looking for. If you are using the Escrow system to protect your work you must include the ‘escrow’ tag. You will also be required to select between the ‘free’ and ‘paid’ tags when creating your release on our forums.

Template

When you are posting something paid or using Escrow, you must always include the following information at the end of your topic:

Code

|                             |                 |
|-----------------------------|-----------------|
| Code is accessible          | Yes/No          |
| Subscription-based          | Yes/No          |
| Lines (approximately)       | Number of lines |
| Requirements & dependencies | Requirements    |
| Support                     | Yes/No          |

Model

|                             |                 |
|-----------------------------|-----------------|
| Assets are accessible       | Yes/No          |
| Subscription-based          | Yes/No          |
| Polygons (model and LOD)    | Number of polys |
| Texture size and amount     | Number          |
| Requirements & dependencies | Requirements    |
| Support                     | Yes/No          |

Map

|                             |                    |
|-----------------------------|--------------------|
| Assets are accessible       | Yes/No             |
| Subscription-based          | Yes/No             |
| MLO                         | Yes/No             |
| Number of rooms             | Number of rooms    |
| Number of entities          | Number of entities |
| Requirements & dependencies | Requirements       |
| Support                     | Yes/No             |

For example

Code is accessible No
Subscription-based No
Lines (approximately) ~250
Requirements OneSync, ox_lib, screenshot-basic
Support Yes
Assets are accessible No
Subscription-based No
Polygons (model and LOD) Highest: 100,000; High: 10,000; Medium: 5,000; Low: 500;
Texture size and amount 512x512 (3x), 256x256 (2x)
Requirements Build 3258
Support Yes

Third-party links

You may only include links to your Discord server or support website, to your Tebex store and to platforms hosting your marketing materials like YouTube but not to other social medias platforms.

Possible links:

  • Discord links
  • Support websites
  • Marketing materials
  • Documentation websites
  • Other dependencies
  • GitHub

Distribution

Any resource, free or paid, must be immediately available.
For free resources, this means you must include a either a link to a public git repository, or upload it directly on the forums, or link to a free Tebex package if you want to distribute it through our Asset Escrow.
For paid resources, you must only use Tebex with our asset delivery system.

Requiring users to join a Discord server, enter license tokens, register accounts, or similar to acquire and/or run a resource is not permitted.

We also highly recommend you to add a FOSS license on your open source repositories before publishing them to the public. To help you pick the appropriate one, information about each licenses is available on Choose a License.

Quality

We want to encourage everyone to create work and share it with the community, but we also have to maintain quality standards to direct our ecosystem in the right direction.

The following are considered low quality …

  • Deprecated methods: Make sure your code doesn’t use deprecated methods such as GetPlayerPed(-1) or outdated manifests like __resource.lua.
  • Few lines: Releases with minimal code (such as only one script file that contains less than 50 lines) are considered too simple and is not allowed. We want users to release meaningful, configurable and complete scripts. Everyone starts somewhere, but not every little script you create needs to be shared.
  • Substantiality: You want to ensure your releases have a reasonable amount of features/content. We want to avoid low-effort releases which do not provide a substantial
  • Security: “Never trust the client” should be your motto when designing resources. All of the logic that you wouldn’t want players to tamper (e.g. how many items you get as reward for an action) should reside within your server-side code.
    You also want to be careful with common attack vectors such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL injections or privilege escalation.
  • Performance: Whether they are scripts or streamed assets, you should always focus on performance to ensure all players can enjoy your content without trouble.
    For scripts, we have a comprehensive guide on how to profile your resources and find slow code paths. For streamed assets, be careful of the amount of polygons and your textures sizes. We also highly recommend to include LOD (Level of Details) for your assets to reduce graphic resources consumption.

User interaction

While interacting in the Releases category please make sure to adhere our forum rules, while also following these guidelines:

  • Comments: Users have the ability to leave comments under a release, this could range from questions about a product before buying to buyers posting reviews. We do not allow hateful or nonproductive comments.
  • Posting reviews: We encourage positive and constructive criticism. If a resource is not of your liking, please provide detailed feedback for the resource author, not slander.
  • Fake interactions: We want the Releases category to be a safe place for buyers, therefore all product reviews must be from users that purchased or used your products. Inciting for reviews on your Discord server and other platforms may lead to actions being taken against your release and/or your account.
  • Review bombing: If your release is the target of hateful reviews or comments from users that did not purchase your product, please flag these messages for moderation attention so these can be reviewed. Please also avoid replying to these comments, as it may escalate the situation out of control.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

I want to release something, but I cannot create a release topic?

Being able to post a topic in the Releases category requires at minimum trust level 1. This should automatically be granted for accounts that are over a day old and have interacted with the site on both days. For more information about trust levels, see Understanding Discourse Trust Levels.

My content is being shared without my permission in the forums. What can I do?

Flag the topic or submit a ticket with a takedown request that includes proof that the content is yours (i.e. screenshots of the original files, links to the original files, diff’s of the original and released files). Staff will look into it as soon as possible.

Please do not encourage others to mass flag the topic and don’t start an argument in the topic.

Why is my topic not being approved?

Please make sure you’ve gone over all the rules above, a topic might get denied by moderation if it’s in violation. If you are unsure why your topic has been denied, please message @moderation.

Why has my topic been closed or unlisted?

If your topic has been closed or unlisted, a moderator will always specify the reason along with the close message. If you are still unsure or think your topic is ready to be listed again, flag the topic or message @moderation.

How do I add a preview on the releases page?

The first image in your topic will be used as preview on the releases page, make sure this image has been uploaded to the forums directly and is not an external link.

400 Likes

Updated Credits & Copyright/DMCA topic to include the allowance for sharing paid content as long as you abide by the rules set in Paid Content subsection:

As long as you abide by these rules, you can sell anything you want using Tebex.

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There was a small, but important update to the Quality of the releases. Releases in the past with negative connotations, such as Nazi flags, despite likely shared for good (ooh a gamemode where you as an alien must killed a bunch of Nazis, sounds like fun!), it results in fighting and negativity on the forum. Even to the point where there are other controversial releases that may actually be shared to aggravate members or even just moderators due to another dispute.

Therefore the following excerpt was added to the Quality section:

Remember we are all here to have fun. It’s not fun for us to limit your creativity due to a minority always having disputes of these type of releases, but we want everyone to have fun and behave like that as well.

Have a nice week even if you read this 6 months later :slight_smile:

42 Likes

Topic has been updated with information about the Asset Escrow system, note that rolling your own obfuscation is still not allowed.

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Little edit about free releases, mentioning that they must contain a direct download.

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Due to confusion at both sellers and buyers we have added a mandatory template which should be included in releases, this will also be added as topic template in the releases category soon.

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TL2 requirement for posting releases was reduced to TL1 since we’ve seen a continued amount of users ‘badly’ trying to help others in an attempt to reach TL2 so they can post their release.

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A ‘Licensing your work’ item has been added to make people aware to properly license their work for releases. This also helps forum staff much more with enforcement.

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You may only post new releases every 12 hours from now on.

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Topic has been updated with the next iteration of the rules, you can read more in Important update to our Release Rules and FAQ.

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