Take-Two has multiple mods for GTA games taken offline
Take-Two, the parent company of GTA creator Rockstar Games, has taken several mods for GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA V offline. One of the mods, GTA: Liberty City, was in development for 16 years.
According to a review post on GTAForums.com, the affected mods are 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 much more’. 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, thus not infringing any copyright. Nevertheless, that mod has been taken offline.
The author of the review post claims that Rockstar recently modified a webpage that outlines what it does and doesn’t allow in the field of modding and deliberately omitted it from Archive.org. PC Gamer states 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 made any statements as to why it wanted the mods offline now. Users speculate that Take-Two wants to start releasing remasters of the older GTA games itself, or that it doesn’t want these mods to take the wind out of GTA 6 ‘s alleged announcement.