Take-Two Has Been Issuing Takedowns for GTA Mods (pcgamer.com) 21
Earlier this year, Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive played takedown whack-a-mole with reverse-engineered versions of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City. The publisher has apparently gone further in the last week or so, issuing DMCA takedown notices for GTA 5 map mods like Vice City Overhaul, as well as multiple popular mods for earlier games in the series. From a report: GTA: Liberty City was a total conversion that brought the setting of GTA 3 into Vice City's engine, and was first released in 2005. It's no longer available on ModDB. Vice Cry, which replaced Vice City's textures and models with higher-resolution versions, is also gone. So is GTA: Underground, which combined the maps of not just GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, but those of other Rockstar games Bully, Manhunt, and Manhunt 2, then added gang warfare. So are the mods converting San Andreas into ports of console-exclusives Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. And that's not all.
A thread on GTAForums has been cataloguing the removals, as well as noting that Rockstar's statement on singleplayer mods, initially made during the back-and-forth over modding tool OpenIV in 2017, and which many modders have been assuming would protect their work, was quietly updated in 2019. It now notes that it does not apply to either the "use or importation of other IP (including other Rockstar IP) in the project" or "making new games, stories, missions, or maps". Neither of those clauses was in the original version of Rockstar's statement, which has been excluded from the Wayback Machine, but can still be read in our news story from the time.
A thread on GTAForums has been cataloguing the removals, as well as noting that Rockstar's statement on singleplayer mods, initially made during the back-and-forth over modding tool OpenIV in 2017, and which many modders have been assuming would protect their work, was quietly updated in 2019. It now notes that it does not apply to either the "use or importation of other IP (including other Rockstar IP) in the project" or "making new games, stories, missions, or maps". Neither of those clauses was in the original version of Rockstar's statement, which has been excluded from the Wayback Machine, but can still be read in our news story from the time.
Pathentic (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you start hunting your own fans down you know you've run out of ideas.
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That's the new multiplayer version. It's like griefing except the publisher does it.
You're worried about the wrong modders (Score:3)
Take-Two and Rockstar - How about fixing your game so that every session isn't plagued by modders with game-breaking exploits, insta-gibbing other players, using invulnerability hacks to grief players with no chance for retribution, caging players, tossing them into the air like ragdolls, and DoS'ing them out of the game? How about you focus on those mods?
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Take-Two and Rockstar - How about fixing your game so that every session isn't plagued by modders ? How about you focus on those mods?
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They're much too busy making money. I feel like I paid for GTA games multiple times, especially the old ones. How many times must I buy GTA:VC and SA before I am allowed to use my copy for personal use as is already specifically allowed by law?
Re:You're worried about the wrong modders (Score:4, Insightful)
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Hmm, GTA is multiplayer now? The summary didn't way which GTA game they were talking about, but let all the mods in the world exist for single player games in my view.
Though I have an acquaintance who only plays console games and he was genuinely shocked that I used mods with fallout or skyrim, and flat out called me a cheater :-) He's and oddball though.
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Going full Nintendo (Score:1)
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Sounds more like the right to be stiffed to me!
They never learn.... (Score:3)
Just because you CAN legally do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.
These companies clearly own the rights to their IP, including the way they wanted their maps, characters and storylines to play out in the commercial game titles they made and sold. But leveraging that fact to remove other people's hard work, modifying the games out of a love of playing them? It's just a boneheaded move.
As another user commented; the far more useful effort would be on controlling the hacking of the multiplayer gaming, so people can't ruin the game for others trying to enjoy it. With a game like GTA V, you really can't even play it online anymore for any length of time without someone coming along who DoS's you out of the game, or uses their hacked, invulnerable player to keep killing you repeatedly, as soon as you respawn, until you get tired of it and quit.
In reality, some of the unofficial mods people have done to re-work games in the past have wound up making a better game than the original. The smart move would be for some of these game studios to approach the people who did that work and try to hire them on!
fair use? (Score:2)
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How do corrupt congress-critters not fall under buses?
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Well, I could create a mod that takes the entire environment from Just Cause 4, an island full of things to drive, fly and blow up, and port it into the GTA V engine, a game in which you drive, fly and blow things up.
Your suggestion is that if I don't charge for this mod it's fair use. I think it would be a very unfair thing to do, as the Just Cause 4 team put a lot of effort into modelling, building and adding textures to that island and have a reasonable expectation that people won't just copy it into oth
Re: fair use? (Score:2)
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You miss the point.
Patch software A to do X: your choice.
Create a mod for software A containing legally protected IP from software B: Software B's IP owner's choice.
Fair use: Not copying wholesale all of the digital assets from a sizeable game and posting them online for others to download.
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That sounds entirely reasonable, and indeed is why Battletech (the Hairbrained Schemes game) has such a magnificent and extensive modding scene.
I think the interesting intersect is where a mod uses original materials but is influenced by someone else's game. Given Take Two had previously acted against mods directly porting assets from other games it's very possible that some clown in legal has just raised a number of wrongful DMCA takedown notices for IP they don''t own.
In which case forget fair use, they n