Rockstar Games has published a new section called “Respect Our Games” in its Modding Guidelines. The text restricts projects that expand or alter the stories, plots, missions, characters, and other elements of the established continuity of its games.

The rules also prohibit combining maps, locations, characters, stories, internal assets, or other intellectual property from one Rockstar game with another. The scope includes character recreations: building a model from scratch does not necessarily avoid the use of an identity belonging to another company title.

In practice, the measure puts ambitious single-player mods at risk, such as fan campaigns featuring canonical characters and map conversions between games. A project that brought Liberty City to GTA V, for example, would fall under the ban on cross-game content.

Rockstar also prohibits modifications that make its games run on consoles, hardware, or platforms for which there has been no official release. The rule limits unauthorized ports and preservation projects that adapt older titles to new devices.

The wording does not state that every original mod is banned. Visual mods, vehicle tweaks, textures, and other creations that do not alter official continuity, reuse intellectual property from another game, or affect online services appear to remain outside the express prohibitions.

Even so, the wording expands Rockstar's control over a significant portion of community creations. Criticism of the guidelines is focused precisely on their reach over creative campaign projects and the exchange of content between games, practices historically associated with the franchise's modding scene.