The Darkside of FiveM: A GTA-RP Postmortem
Not all fun and Games.
I recently retired from development, I use that term lightly, from FiveM and GTA-RP. I participated in the RP for over a year and spent nine months working as a developer and in various positions on senior staff for a community. This article will discuss insights into what I perceive as issues within the overall world of FiveM. My observations are shaped mainly by the city I worked on. However, some are shaped by my interactions with the broader community. I approached GTARP with 15 years of professional experience as a software developer and 10 years of game design and development experience. These observations are in no particular order of importance.
“Developers” and “Development”
One of the very first things I learned about FiveM is that the development community is vast, but for the most part, you won’t find any real developers making cities. Most people who do development work for GTA cities are hobbyists, without actual development knowledge. City developers mostly modify configuration files. The configurations are LUA scripts by real developers.
You will find the real developers creating scripts that every gullible city “dev” or city owner will snatch up. Rarely do you find them running a city. People with actual development skills mostly fall…
