So I’ve been following along with the recent news about FiveM/Rockstar Announcing that We are not allowed to use Branded Vehicles with Any type of Badges or Emblems on them that Show the Car Brand, Make or Model.
With that being said, before this announcement came to my knowledge I had purchased a large amount of vehicles from a Developer who was having a 93% off Sale. Now that I am approaching the launch date of my server one of the last things on my list is dealing with the vehicles I have that have been purchased that are not “Generic” and have Badges and Emblems…
With that I went to the Discord for said Developer and asked if they would be releasing a “Generic” version, since I had just purchased these vehicles and don’t want my money going to waste, and essentially what I was told was that FiveM/Rockstar has been saying this for ages, and that they really have no problem with the cars having badges or emblems its brand names like Starbucks and Amazon and things of that nature…
Just wanted to get some input… Please see attached screenshot from my conversation in the General Section of the Developers Discord from this evening (Date: 1/21/2023 Approx. 8:30pm EST)
I know that R* had a problem with a big server project that sold and used real life car brands. They had to debadge the vehicles and as far as i know R* was ok with that. If you make profit out of your server because you are selling real life cars, you will 100% get in trouble. Idk if you get in any trouble for just using them.
all real branded content and pretty sure there is no grace period as in the ToS it states that changes are effective immediately and it’s the server owners responsibility to keep up to date with it. Best advice is to remove them and use lore friendly vehicles
Shifting to non-branded vehicles seems like a sensible move considering the new guidelines. I’ve seen that big devs like Ripple and Redsaint are already giving an option to go logo-free when you buy vehicles from them. This seems like a good way to stay on the safe side in case Rockstar starts cracking down on servers with branded content. From what I understand, Rockstar/FiveM doesn’t have an issue with the car models, it’s the logos that are the sticking point. So, going non-branded might just save a lot of hassle and ensure your server runs smoothly without any hiccups down the line.
So i was trialling another server called Tennessee State RP and they released a post saying they don’t have to de-badge cars because all the money goes back into the server, then the owner started asking for money for personal reasons. Where does this server stand? will they get away with it?
As someone who went sideways from the music industry into game development… the amount of bad info here about copyright and intellectual property is unbelievable.
First off: Rockstars main issue with IP is people uploading models from other games into theirs. If you take a car from Forza and put it into FiveM… that puts a target on Rockstar and CFX. Same goes for any content from any other games.
You are much more likely to have action taken against you from a copyright report than you are to have a big angry rockstar finger randomly point you out and ban you.
This is creating the impression to people that there is no action being taken at large. Not true, but it would cost a LOT of money and would ruin FiveM to strategically start taking out EVERY account proactively. Rockstar is now making money from CFX, so what they SAY and what they DO might not line up very tightly.
Debadging doesnt make ANY difference to breaking IP. The copyright is in the design of the car (car manufacturer) AND the design of the game model (game designer), not just the cars brand logos. The shape itself is copyright protected.
This can be shown with Rockstars own GTA5 vehicle list. Every car is based on a real-world car, with enough changes made to the body design to avoid being hit with copyright cases. Nothing is exactly the same, but they are all extremely derivative. A Kuruma is an Evo etc, etc…
If you are making money from someone elses intellectual property, its theft. They WILL come knocking if they have their attention directed towards you.
This is exactly correct. With sounds, it doesnt matter who made the car, or who made the game. The audio recording is either owned by the person recording it, or by the company they recorded it for. Important to differentiate that its that specific recording that is copyrighted, not the “sound” itself. A 2nd recording of the same sound will not be owned by the person who recorded the 1st sound.
