Over the last couple of months, Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive has been in the news for two distinct reasons. The first is always tied to GTA VI and/or a San Andreas and Vice City remaster. The second might be connected and involves the massive conglomerate picking on mod makers. Is this a clever marketing ploy or is something else going on?
Take-Two cracks down on GTA mods
Passionate authors of various GTA mods have been talking about the wrath of Take-Two for a while now. Just last week, the lead developer of GTA Underground (a popular San Andreas mod) posted on the GTA Forums that the mod in question has been taken offline. The reason is the same as always:
Due to the increasing hostility towards the modding community and imminent danger to our mental and financial well-being, we sadly announce that we are officially ceasing the development of GTA: Underground and will be shortly taking all official uploads offline.
A few weeks before this one, Eurogamer reported that multiple GTA V mod menus were taken offline. Another prominent case took place in July; a Vice City conversion mod for GTA V was effectively nuked.
Is it as obvious as it seems?
These are just some of the DMCA strikes and cease and desist letters Take-Two seems to be sending to teams behind popular and seemingly harmless GTA mods full time now. And while there’s nothing wrong with protecting intellectual property, there seems to be something else going on.
Every single one of the bullied devs made similar mods. Ones that converted classic GTA’s like San Andreas and Vice City into modern ones. Or ones that made a modern GTA V look like those old ones.
In any case, they had something to do with the beloved old Grand Theft Auto games from the early 2000’s. So if you’d ask me, that means one of two things. One, Take-Two is tired of the San Andreas/Vice City rumors and doesn’t want to print free money to please fans asking for a genuine release. Or two, Take-Two is tired of the San Andreas/Vice City rumors because they are absolutely true…
Whichever the case, just bloody announce the remasters already, it’s starting to get a bit pathetic. These mod makers are so passionate, and yet they are only greeted with lawsuits. Except for that one guy that got 10k for actually improving GTA V. As we wrote, he was the first one to actually get praise for his mod. As far as we know, he’s the only one in the history of the franchise.
Image credit: Take-Two / Rockstar Games, please don’t sue us