alt:V has shut down: moving your RP server to FiveM

01What happened to alt:V

In early 2026, Take-Two asked for alt:V to be shut down. The team chose a phased closure rather than pulling the plug overnight, to give server admins time to move. In its announcement, it pointed out that FiveM is the only authorized platform for modded GTA V multiplayer, as defined in Rockstar's platform license agreement.

• March 2, 2026: no new community servers could register.
• May 4, 2026: the public server list was taken down.
• July 6, 2026: the service and community support ended.
• August 31, 2026: RAGE:MP shut down in turn, also at Take-Two's request, with the same conclusion: FiveM is the authorized route.

02FiveM in 2026: where the platform stands

FiveM arrived on Steam in early 2026. According to public trackers, from February to September 2026 it averaged roughly 120,000 to 130,000 concurrent players there, peaking at around 219,000 in April 2026; those figures only count launches through Steam. By mid-October 2026 there were about 7,100 servers online. Your players are not moving to an empty platform: many already have an account there, and sometimes another favorite server.

That size cuts both ways: competition between servers is fierce, and a community arriving from alt:V has to earn its spot in an already long list. Your edge is a group of players who know each other, a seasoned staff and a shared history. The migration plan should protect that first. To sell perks or paid resources, the route the Cfx.re terms provide for goes through Tebex: read the terms again before you reopen a store.

03What changes between alt:V and FiveM

Both platforms run the same game, with the same natives and the same map files. Almost everything else differs: how a resource is declared, the scripting API, how player identity works, and the ecosystem around roleplay. The table lists the main equivalents.

The last rows matter as much as the others: on FiveM, most roleplay servers run on a shared framework, and the scripts out there are written for it. The ESX vs QBCore vs QBox comparison helps you choose before you port anything.

04Your JavaScript and C# scripts: what carries over

Good news first: FiveM runs JavaScript and C#, on both client and server, alongside Lua. An alt:V server written in JavaScript doesn't start from scratch. Server-side JavaScript runs on an embedded Node.js that loads packages from the resource's node_modules folder.

The bad news: the APIs have nothing in common. Events, player and vehicle objects, sync and client-server messaging are all written differently, and FiveM's C# runtime is not alt:V's. Expect to rewrite the whole layer that talks to the game, even where the business logic survives.

• Carries over almost as is: pure logic (calculations, economy rules, validation), SQL queries, and HTML, CSS and JavaScript interfaces, once the message channel between the interface and the game is redone.
• Gets rewritten: event handlers, creating and handling entities, permissions, anything that touches the connected player.
• Gets replaced: your home-made core systems (inventory, phone, jobs, banking) if you adopt a roleplay framework, which already provides them and which other scripts build on.
• Carries over after repackaging: added maps, interiors, vehicles and clothing. They are game files, which go into a FiveM resource with its fxmanifest and stream folder.

05The database and player accounts

On alt:V, each server picked its own database: MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL or MongoDB, depending on the team's taste. FiveM roleplay frameworks work on MariaDB or MySQL, with their own tables for characters, money, inventories and vehicles. A MySQL database is easy to read back; a MongoDB one needs converting before it can be imported.

Identities change too. alt:V mostly recognized the Social Club account, while FiveM provides a Rockstar license in a different form, plus the Discord ID, the Cfx.re account and, if the server requires it, Steam. The Discord ID is the simplest bridge: if your alt:V accounts were linked to Discord, that is how you find your players again for their roles, whitelist spot or perks.

06The migration plan, step by step

1. Take stock: every resource, its role, its language, its data, and what players expect from it. Separate what is unique to your city from what a framework already provides.
2. Pick the framework before touching code: ESX, QBCore or QBox. All the porting depends on it.
3. Create your license key on the Cfx.re portal, plus a Steam Web API key if you plan to recognize players by Steam. The documentation on the Cfx key explains what to do if it is refused.
4. Set up a test server. If you self-host, open port 30120 over TCP and UDP for the game, and 40120 for the txAdmin interface if you use it.
5. Export what you keep: accounts, Discord IDs, roles, sanctions, and the data of your unique scripts, as .sql where possible.
6. Port in order of importance: first the scripts that give the city its identity, then the comfort features. Whatever the framework already does is not worth porting.
7. Test a full loop with a few people: create a character, take a job, get paid, buy something, get arrested, get treated.
8. Set a reopening date and stick to it, with a launch night and the full staff on hand.

07Keeping your players through the switch

A migration is rarely lost on the technical side: it is lost to silence. Between alt:V closing and your FiveM reopening, your players are a click away from dozens of other cities. Your Discord is the one link left, and that is where the migration has to happen in public.

• Announce early, with a date. "We reopen on FiveM on such a day" holds people better than "we're working on it".
• Show progress: screenshots, short clips, a channel dedicated to what is new in the future city.
• Open a closed beta to your most loyal players: they test, they talk about it, and they will be there on the first night.
• Present the fresh start for characters as a choice, and recognize seniority in other ways: a Discord role, queue priority, a reserved whitelist spot.
• Help with setup: a short guide to installing FiveM, now on Steam, and a help channel for the first few days.

08Your options for starting again on FiveM

An alt:V team that still has its developers can perfectly well restart from a free framework on its own machine. A team whose developer left along with the platform will save time with a hosted base. The risks of packs and pirated scripts are covered in FiveM server packs, and the twelve-month numbers in what a FiveM RP server costs.

09Moving to Nova: what is done for you

Nova Studio provides a managed FiveM RP server: the FiveM server base built on QBox, 67 modules shipped together, hosted on OVH Game dedicated servers behind their anti-DDoS and updated by us at your server's next restart. Jobs, economy, items, vehicles, properties and permissions are set in game with /admin, without opening a file.

• A whitelist by Discord account, and staff ranks taken from your Discord roles: the Discord IDs you kept from alt:V work straight away.
• Staff action logs posted in your Discord channels, an in-game staff menu and a server-side anticheat with graduated sanctions.
• Your unique scripts, once ported, go into resources/[client] from your account area (how-to).
• Their data imports as .sql into the server's primary database, the one scripts read (databases); characters start from zero, as the migration documentation explains.
• A backup before each batch of scripts, restorable from the Backups screen (backups).

The subscription covers hosting, updates and support: NOVA at €99 a month for 64 players, NOVA+ at €149 for 128 players, NOVA INFINITY at €229 for 256 players. The pricing page shows the current offers and the ones you can buy today. You also need your own license key, created on the Cfx.re portal; Nova does not sell it.

Frequently asked questions