Take-Two allows multiple mods for GTA games to be taken offline

Take-Two, the parent company of GTA creator Rockstar Games, has had multiple mods for GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA V taken offline. One of the mods, GTA: Liberty City, was in development for 16 years.

According to an overview post on GTAForums.com are the affected mods GTA3 Portland, Vice City Overhaul, GTA: Underground, GTA: Liberty City, GTA State of Liberty, GTAV on San Andreas, Vice Cry, Liberty City Stories: PC Edition, Vice City Stories: PC Edition’ and many more Lake’. The mods were hosted on ModDB.com; the pages for the mods still exist, but contain no content except for a description.

The mods in question offer things like an import of multiple GTA maps to San Andreas, but other mods, such as Vice Cry, would only use self-developed assets, ensuring no copyright infringement. Nevertheless, that mod has been taken offline.

The review post’s author claims that Rockstar has a webpage where it spells out what it does and doesn’t allows modding, has recently edited and deliberately omitted from Archive.org. PC Gamer poses that the page has been supplemented with a ban on importing content from other games into Rockstar games and adding new games, stories, missions and maps. With that, the lion’s share of what mods offer is no longer allowed.

Take-Two has not commented on why it now wanted the mods offline. Users speculate that Take-Two wants to release remasters of the older GTA games itself, or that it doesn’t want these mods to take the wind out of the supposed announcement of GTA 6.