Take-Two shuts down GTA's OpenIV Mod

Posted By: GamerDating - June 16, 2017

This week it was reported that GTA OpenIV, a modding tool and community that has supported GTA for from back when GTA III kicked off, nearly 10 years ago, has been issued with a cease and desist from Take-Two.

Since GTA III, people have created lots of different mods: from simple texture replacements to impressive full conversions. And the modding always was a “gray zone” — a battlefield between lawyers and PR…

For almost ten years of OpenIV development, we had tried to play as nice as possible and even more:

  • Strictly following of Civil Code of Russia (only reverse engineering for interoperability).
  • Only clean-room reverse engineering.
  • No distribution of original data and code.
  • And absolutely no messing with Online…

The letter, landing in their laps on June 5th stated they were creating software in violation and the modding community feel they could fight this in court, but they don't want to. 

Going to court will take at least few months of our time and huge amount of efforts, and, at best, we’ll get absolutely nothing.
Spending time just to restore status quo is really unproductive, and all the money in the world can’t compensate the loss of time.

So, we decided to agree with their claims and we’re stopping distribution of OpenIV.

This is not the first time we've seen Take-Two ham fist into the modding scene, back in 2015 when they sent private investigators around to modding members of the GTAmp homes. 

Take-Two confirmed their statement, seen below:

"Take-Two's actions were not specifically targeting single player mods. Unfortunately OpenIV enables recent malicious mods that allow harassment of players and interfere with the GTA Online experience for everybody. We are working to figure out how we can continue to support the creative community without negatively impacting our players."

It has led to some speculation about the incoming DLC, micro transactions and monetising the modding world, but leads confused scratching heads. Axing the modding community is one rookie move, removing the support and love for a fairly small scene, but vastly important one. 

Let me leave you with this question; How many times have you seen a gif or video of something whacky or crazy in GTA IV?