Omareloff (Omar) never imagined he’d become so successful. But sometimes, with the backing of a tight-knit online community behind you, the seemingly impossible can come true. 

Omar began his streaming career 11 years ago, and it eventually became so lucrative that he could pay off his parents’ house, buy his family members their own cars, and support his brother with a beautiful wedding. Now, Omar’s treated himself to a lamborghini which will soon sport a custom license plate that reads “GTA,” out of respect to the community that he loves and owes so much to.

Omar’s success story is thanks to the massive popularity and impact of Grand Theft Auto V’s role-playing community. Role-playing, which involves entering a modded server to assume a new identity and act out scenarios, is popular in several MMOs and sandboxes, such as Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, Project Zomboid, and many more. But Grand Theft Auto V’s world of Los Santos stands out, offering a slice-of-life city experience where players lead modern lives in a living, breathing simulation.

Players step into the shoes of their customized character — some have a full backstory — to follow in-depth career paths, join gangs, participate in day-to-day activities, and much more. It’s the kind of game where the possibilities are endless; you can lead a mundane life with a 9-6, or become a criminal mastermind that plots bank heists. Imagine a virtual improv production with a sea of endless actors. That’s what role-playing servers are all about. 

The community continues to grow, and shows no signs of slowing down. FiveM, a company that hosts the most well-known GTA role-play servers (e.g. NoPixel), has a platform that regularly peaks between 250,000 and 300,000 concurrent players daily. That’s more than most Steam games ever see, outside of a rotating top five.

Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar officially teamed up with FiveM late last year, signaling that the role-playing community is now too big for the game’s makers to ignore. Other companies like EclipseRP, GTA World, and more continue to operate their servers independently and unofficially while bringing in large numbers of players. The text-only GTA World has thousands of concurrent players, and briefly made a cameo appearance in Kanye West and Travis Scott’s music video “Wash Us In The Blood.”

But what makes Grand Theft Auto V’s role-playing community so unique? Why are so many people attracted to this kind of play? We spoke with community members and server owners to understand the full picture. 

A Whole New World

Each server offers something different, including various levels of realism, difficulty, and voice or text integration. For some, they’re a respite from the real world; for others, they’re a lucrative streaming opportunity. But what ultimately draws people to them is that they’re spaces where players’ fantasies can fully take form.

When role-playing, players must consistently stay in character throughout every interaction. Players can apply for jobs, a process that requires real effort: they’ll send in a job application, go to an in-game job interview, and put in actual hours for in-game pay. You can become a lawyer, a police officer, an ambulance driver, a barista, and so on. Or, alternatively — and maybe more in line with the image of GTA — you can band with criminal forces and become a getaway driver, all while avoiding cops played by other players. Alternatively, you can just roam the city as a free civilian and see what happens organically. Role-playing requires a high level of dedication, leading players to research real-world civil or criminal court cases if they’re working as a lawyer, or applicable societal laws as politicians and legislators, to simulate them effectively.

“The most popular job [in our server] is probably that of a police officer,” EclipseRP founders Paulius and Osvaldas said. “We have two law enforcement factions: the metropolitan police department and the county sheriff’s department. Both factions have their general operations, S.W.A.T., and detective divisions. The requirements are pretty strict too. All players who enlist as candidates have their criminal records checked; if their record isn’t clean, their enlistment is denied.” 

In this instance, players undergo training at a police academy, obtain a firearms license, and learn how to perform CPR, Paulius and Osvaldas explained. 

“The job provides a few dozen different uniforms, highly specialized equipment and firearms, police cars, helicopters, and speedboats. It involves a lot of action and other routine activities, so it’s no surprise that the job is quite popular.”

Server creators and players work tirelessly to flesh out their worlds with activities, player-run economies, career paths, player-run governments, and criminal organizations in order to keep the world alive and evolving. Firm rules are set to ensure every single interaction is in line with the boundaries of the world.

Paulius and Osvaldas believe that role-playing is unique because players can lead a second life, while the standard version of Grand Theft Auto V Online takes a more “arcade” approach with popular modes like cops and robbers.

“[GTA Online players] typically play with or against random players, participate in missions, minigames, or just roam the world looking for action,” Paulius and Osvaldas said. “Roleplay servers, however, are different because they are more immersive and complex, resembling the real world more closely.”

Many players also make long-lasting friendships and bonds through the power of role-playing. The characters they build and the connections they form are incredibly impactful, especially because role-play is all about player-to-player interaction.

“Players tend to form bonds that eventually extend into the real world, [resulting in] friendships, relationships, marriages, and families,” Paulius and Osvaldas said. “There are also cases where our players organized funerals for the characters of players who had passed away in real life. These can be conducted in an actual church with someone role-playing a priest giving a sermon, in a respectful manner, of course. There is also a tombstone in our metropolitan cemetery with the names of these characters engraved to keep their memory alive.”

For Omareloff, Grand Theft Auto V’s role-playing servers offered him an exciting opportunity to lean into goofy, organic encounters. He’d already been a content creator for 11 years, streaming games like Counter-Strike, Fortnite, and Grand Theft Auto V. But his GTA role-playing streams put him on the map, with videos that regularly generate hundreds of thousands of views as he roams the world as different characters, with his most popular being named Jose Exotic. While streaming GTA V as Jose Exotic, Omar’s TikTok following gradually grew from 100,000 to 1.2 million. 

Jose Exotic is a quirky persona who explores Los Santos while wearing the kinds of novelty shutter neon glasses you’d normally spot at a rave, and a baby carrier strapped to his chest. Omar puts on a squeaky, high-pitched voice while he plays Jose, taking on an eclectic variety of jobs including cop, getaway driver, or hitman. He’s also performed impressive feats like defeating some of the strongest GTA gangs single-handedly.

“Initially, [Jose Exotic] started off as a car thief,” explained Omar. “The funny thing is that he would sneak into these big huddles of people and steal their cars. Eventually, [as Jose grew in popularity,] he would show up, and other players would see him, and all you would hear is beep, beep, beep. Everyone would start locking their cars. So that was really funny and went viral.”

Omar started off playing primarily on FiveM servers, but because of the playful nature of his streams and his large following, he occasionally clashed with other community members who thought he was there for the “wrong” reasons. 

“A lot of people that role-play, they want to use it as a second life,” Omar says. “We clashed a lot at the start. I had this entertaining, fun, happy, adrenaline rush type [content], and they saw that as a threat to their community. So what we decided to do was create our own space, and we made our own server.”

A Serious Dedication

There is no defining precedent of what a role-play server should or shouldn’t look like. Every server is a bit different. In Omar’s server, Liquid RP (which he coincidentally named before he joined Team Liquid as a content creator in 2024), he fosters a streamer-friendly environment with less restrictions, and it’s open to everyone. However, there is still a whitelisting process for those who wish to join, to filter out uncooperative or toxic players. 

“Some players are just looking for instant fun and being able to roleplay whatever they want — we call that ‘light’ role-play, because the rules are very easy and it's not realistic,” said GTA World founder Nervous. “GrandRP is a good example of it. Then you have ‘medium’ role-play servers, where you have more rules but they don't aim at being realistic or copying real life, like Eclipse RP or NoPixel.”

Some servers build out strict rulesets and require prospective players to complete an application process. This is how GTA World, a hardcore role-play server that receives on average 100 applications daily, operates. According to Nervous, only about 10 percent of them are accepted.

“The examination [process] takes approximately two to three hours to complete, and you have to learn the rules,” explained Nervous. “You'll also have to write answers about scenarios to ensure that you have understood what realistic role-play is. Of course, some players can cheat their way in, but they're very quickly reported in-game and then banned.” 

The biggest rule of all is to stay in character at all times. In GTA World’s case, this includes even when you’re alone. If you’re in a solo car accident, you’re expected to role-play your injuries that occur to your character, i.e. getting treated at a nearby hospital, acting in pain, or role-playing your character’s fear. Failing to role-play in these expected scenarios could result in a “permanent character kill,” as noted in the official rules. 

What’s most notable about GTA World is that the role-playing experience is entirely text based, meaning players are not allowed to use voice chat to speak. This is a deliberate measure by GTA World staff to create an “old-school role-play environment” similar to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Nervous had a successful role-play server for that game, too).

“It works best for us because it allows players to be fully immersed in the role-play without having to deal with voices not matching the character,” Nervous said. “For example, a 14-year-old kid trying to speak like a Russian mobster is not something our players are willing to accept.”

Having players chat through text means there’s an added element of deliberation and a slower pace, because they have to fully describe every role-play action.

“Obviously what works best nowadays for the youngest audiences are the voice based servers,” Nervous says. “But after seven years of being one of the most populated servers in the world, we have proven to everyone that niche text role-play still attracts a lot of players, [especially] when it has quality and good scripts.

“Most players don't have the time commitment or the motivation to get into servers [like ours], but those who do stick with them stay for a very long time. Most of our players have been with us for years.”

EclipseRP takes a more moderate approach. Before you can start playing, new players are required to submit an application, though it is less extensive than GTA World’s. They need to prove their English language proficiency and understanding of the server’s rules. 

“This process is automated through the use of A.I.,” EclipseRP founders Paulius and Osvaldas said. “Applications that get denied are sent to a member of our support staff for review. Once the player finally joins the game, they may submit inquiries to our staff members, who will gladly assist them. They may use the same process to report rule breaches.”

Whenever a player breaks a rule, EclispeRP’s priority is to “educate the player,” and if there’s a misunderstanding, the punishment may be waived.

“If the player is reluctant to learn or outright refuses to play by the rules, then an actual punishment may be issued, varying based on their behavior, the rule broken, and their overall record,” they said. “In severe cases, this could eventually result in an indefinite ban.”

The High Cost of Servers

Keeping a server running is a full-time, round-the-clock engagement. GTA V’s most popular servers tend to have a staff of administrators, developers, and moderators, and there are numerous operational costs to consider on top of that. Omar’s server, for example, has a full staff of 42. In 2021, a staffer from the FiveM server NoPixel explained that monthly costs reached an astounding $10,000. 

“That’s not just server costs,” read the post by Archnea. “We obviously send the devs some love too.”

Nervous says this number isn’t “far off” from the cost of GTA’s most popular servers. One of the most expensive pursuits is defending from hackers and DDoS attacks, which takes “hundreds of hours” and is “by far the worst part of the job,” he said. 

There is also the question of balancing and moderating the player-run economy, and ensuring it doesn’t collapse. This requires time and resources — in Omar’s case, his team has “constant meetings” about implementing new features to make sure “people aren’t becoming millionaires overnight.”

One time, a player from LiquidRP found an exploit where a glitch could be used to generate infinite honey from bees. 

“We could have had our entire [in-game] economical structure fall apart just because one guy found a way to glitch beekeeping,” Omar says. “That was one of our biggest problems. We had a beekeeper job where you tend bees, and someone found a glitch where you could sell honey nonstop, and he made millions, and then he gave people free cars.” 

This kind of issue happens “frequently,” and it can impact the economic flow entirely. While Omar refrained from talking specifics about how much these resources cost, he says that keeping the server healthy, well-managed, and thriving means facing “expenses that are pretty substantial.”

For many, creating a revenue stream is paramount to keeping their servers up and running. Some offer purchasable cosmetics, while others take it a step further with pay to win and loot boxes — but Omar refrains from predatory methods.

“There are servers that do crazy money grab type stuff,” Omar says. “We don't make a killing, but we’re a pretty big server. So what we charge for is a priority queue.”

LiquidRP, being one of the more popular established servers, tends to have a long wait to gain access. There is a “huge flow of traffic,” Omar says, and subscription-based priority queues with different tiers allow players to jump the line like they would with a Six Flags fast pass.

GTA World similarly refuses to lean into pay-to-win schemes, and prefers to sell cosmetics for its player base. “We only sell cosmetic features, like the ability to have a cat, a dog, or more furniture in your house,” Nervous says. “We do not directly sell cars or guns in the shop, for example, and we do not sell in-game money. If we did, we would most likely be able to multiply per five or ten the money paid by the players, but at the same time we would betray all our strict player base and that is not something we're willing to do. 

“What matters [is that] at the end of the month, we have enough money to pay for everything and ensure we still do for the next 10 years to come — even if we end up with less players in the future.” 

Looking to the Future

2023’s FiveM acquisition by Rockstar has left the community reeling, with most feeling apprehensive. For one, it could threaten the longevity of unofficial servers, whose creators may face more restrictions or obstacles as Rockstar launches Grand Theft Auto VI in 2025.

“If Rockstar doesn't accept [third-party] companies running servers, there will be no big role-play servers anymore in the future,” Nervous said. “I do hope and trust that my favorite company since I was a kid will make the best decision, but I am still worried, as they haven't contacted us to understand our needs for the future. Of course, I don't expect them to, but obviously if they do not know us, it'll be difficult to reach our technical expectations.”

“So far, nothing has changed for us as we are still able to attract new players to our roleplay community,” Eclipse founders Paulius and Osvaldas said. “It is, of course, a huge marketing victory for FiveM, which can now present itself as the ‘official’ custom server platform. However, GTA V is an old game, first released in 2013, so we wonder what plans there are for FiveM and GTA VI, or if these two will be unrelated.”

Omar sees the Rockstar and FiveM partnership as “a bit of a scare,” too. 

“We haven't seen what would come of it yet,” he said. “I know that they've already locked down a lot of sectors of FiveM and put their control over them. So some things aren't as open anymore, but the major impact hasn't been seen yet.” 

The question of whether GTA VI will bring forth role-play integration built in with the FiveM team is unanswered as of yet, and only time will tell. But server owners hope that all the progress and success they have seen won’t vanish in the blink of an eye when the new entry comes out next year. 

Omar hopes to continue building his audience, and extending his reach and impact so that he can continue paying it forward. He once taught a financial class within Grand Theft Auto V about how to build and fix credit, and he hopes to do more opportunities like it.

“I taught thousands of people how to fix their credit, and being able to share that side of me so freely and openly and really just show people everything I've learned,” he says. “I've been through the craziest life experiences. My dad was a cab driver and we were a very low income family. My siblings were triplets. They were born when my dad was a cab driver, and I was 10 years old. I had to raise them. Everything that I've learned or experienced in life, I can easily [use to] help someone else benefit from my knowledge, [and that can be] through GTA. My future is helping others get to where I got to, and shedding that kind of positive light. I want my footprint on the world to be a very positive one.”