Take-Two vs The GTA Modding Community, 2021 E&E Edition

[Americana]

Still, it's pretty weird that a company like Take2 makes some weird "deals" with modders.

[Claude_Lib]

On 8/2/2021 at 12:47 AM, NightmanCometh96 said:

IIRC, didn't Lucid Games also use textures from a GTA III mod for the mobile version of LCS? (It may have been the Xbox HD conversion textures, but it's been a while since I read about it.)

What if that was the whole reason? Like, hey guys, delete all your mods so that our team of underpaid interns working on remasters won't accidentally take your models and textures.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Claude_Lib said:

What if that was the whole reason? Like, hey guys, delete all your mods so that our team of underpaid interns working on remasters won't accidentally take your models and textures.

Bingo, that's exactly what I'm thinking. I can see this so-called GTA Trilogy "rema-ster/ke" eventually becoming, as someone over at the Trilogy rema-ster/ke speculation topic said. the biggest fraud in gaming history.

[Kirsty]

 

Just stated during the T2 Q1 earnings call

[CynicalMexican]

So he said something without really saying anything.

[Lioshenka]

On 8/1/2021 at 6:36 PM, Ash_735 said:

The thing is we KNOW this, practically any game has these safe guard EULAs that prevent pretty much ANYTHING except leasing you a license to play the game, not stream it, not mod it, not even look at the files but it always boils down to how a company chooses to act on that.

 

Rockstar themselves used to PROMOTE mods back on their website, there was always a nice relationship between Rockstar and the modding in the early days (excluding Hot Coffee) but things changed after GTA Online was released and then it being Take-Two who tried to come out in full force and make ANY modding of their games illegal, that's what lead to the this "agreement" with Rockstar stepping in and saying no, that's not good, we're cool with Single Player mods as long as the following isn't breached.

 

And now, suddenly it's not again? With no warning or heads up, just a flat out attack on the community which was also done at the same time as the Tuners update coming out to act as a distraction, it feels like we deserve SOME comment on this such as why now, what's changed, why choose this point in 2021 to act on rules that were changed on the sly in 2019 but also going back on the comments made by Rockstar themselves in 2017?

 

Really in a capitalist world one should never take what a multimillion company is saying seriously; they pretended to live the mods because back then it was something that drove sales, now GTA Online drives the sales, so their attitude changed accordingly.

 

But fair enough, they are just being dicks. Can't argue with that!

Edited August 2, 2021 by Lioshenka

[Ash_735]

59 minutes ago, Kirsty said:

 

Just stated during the T2 Q1 earnings call

This honestly feels like he doesn't know about what's going on now because that sounds like something said under the old agreement, I'd love to know what a texture mod like Vice Cry for instance is "bad behaviour" or how it's "threatening the economy". Will add this to the OP though.

[Gravarty]

Yeah, creating mods and tools for GTA is so bad and threatening the market, that Rockstar North actually used/or used to test one of these fan-made tools for developing GTA Vice City. Well ok, this was before the HC fiasco but after all these GTA IV cinematic modding videos started to appear on YT, R* started to like the modding community again.
 

Quote

A lot of the mods are pretty impressive pieces of software. Especially since

the authors have to figure out the formats of data files etc.

Source: 

EDIT: Sorry if this may sound harsh. I think it's just wrong to say that mods are "threatening the market" and this is a valid reason to just DMCA everything. 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Gravarty

[GhettoJesus]

Is he thinking that T2 is going bankrupt because of some people redrawing textures? Absolute state of T2, it really shows he doesn't understand anything at all. And flexible? Nah man you are just acting like a bitch over some mods.

Edited August 3, 2021 by GhettoJesus

[Claude_Lib]

That's the benefit of being a CEO of a big company, you can spit out absolutely vague and irrelevant nonsense and no one is able to call you out on it.

[Adminsaredicks]

16 hours ago, Kirsty said:

 

Just stated during the T2 Q1 earnings call

Zelnick is afraid of losing dollars, so he humilate all threats with all extends. I guess what he do next .

 

If 3D era mod is threat in any way...

[skatefilter5]

T2 should really allows the mods to their "old" games such san andreas so we brought we can do whatever but if they ust comment about gta online for using mods or hacks its should more problem then offline gta games.

 

 Now we need we can use gta map crossovers.

I hope openmanhunt, openbull weren't taken down but sighty might. 

Openliberty is just the target so.....I'll check and see if they alive o taken down.

 

 

I think it's possible for GTA Underground to remove all the map s that created by Take 2 interactive such as liberty, vice, bullsworth, manhunt.

But custom maps like chacigo and San Andreas map can stay but the problem they have get rid of any T2 vehicles and peds from other gta games and customs they can't really do anything with see but I'll never see T2 assets again leaving SA related assets even worst weapons this also have remove unless u modified the weapon or copy custom to any weapon by T2 and you still get same effect. 

 

Something need to be shift or remixed so T2 don't regionnize this is LC or VC but however they might unless edit most of their assets to make it unregionize as possible not to make too LC or VC. 

 

You can make something like Japan, GTA never have japan map so think about that. It's better than replaying LC and VC, that can also called Gta underground in Gta Underground Remix.

Edited August 3, 2021 by skatefilter5

[dkluin]

2 hours ago, Ondr4H said:

Zelnick is afraid of losing dollars, so he humilate all threats with all extends. I guess what he do next .

 

If 3D era mod is threat in any way...

We're no threat. Nor are the other mods. They're either delusional or genuinely have no clue about what their legal team requested to be taken down. I think it's the latter.

[Ash_735]

I don't usually repost YouTubers but since a few have been covering it, worth posting here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Carbonox]

"Bad behavior" is a funny choice of words for someone whose goons committed harassment on a modder just a while ago.

[Ash_735]

Dragging up more research on this and funnily enough (or sadly) I found an old article on the BBC website dating way back to 2005 that was written partially by GTAF's old staff @illspirit :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4735603.stm

 

Quote

Modding isn't a new thing at all.

I've been involved in modding the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series since early 1998, and even back then there was a rather large community of people making mods for the games. This was my first real entry into modding, but before this, modding had been quite popular dating back to the early 90's. I'm not quite sure when it started, as the earliest thing in memory is the original Doom game way back in 1993.

 

iD software gave its fans programs to edit and create graphics and maps for Doom, which quickly resulted in a massive amount of user-made content. As the internet became more and more common, it allowed fans to meet up and share their content more easily. The mod phenomenon initially focused on multi-player shooter titles, but quickly spread to other types of games as fans began getting together to make fan sites and message boards. It's hard to tell how many people actively create mods, but as far as PC gaming goes, a vast number of gamers use them quite extensively. Series such as Doom, Unreal, and Half-Life provide active support for user-made content, and it's not uncommon to find multi-player servers which only contain user-made levels. The sheer number of levels out there, and the varying complexity of design, would seem to indicate there are countless people who create mods - either as a regular hobby, or just to have a quick go at making a simple map to see how it works.

As far as mods extending the life of games, well, that would be an understatement. The original Half-Life came out in 1997, and a number of mods for it continued to be among the most popular online games up until (and past) the release of Half-Life 2 last year. The Counter-Strike mod, for instance, steadily stayed at the top of the list for the number of people playing it online on Gamespy.com's servers. It was only bumped from the top spot by the release of the mod for the updated Half-Life 2 engine. Also, the Counter-Strike mod was so popular, that Valve software bought the rights to it, released it as a retail title and hired some of the modders involved with it.

 

Modding the 3D GTA titles has been a mixed bag. Portions of the game use simple text files to control various aspects of the game, which are easily editable in any text editor. Things like the 3D models, textures, and other binary files required lots of research, testing, and creation of custom tools to edit. Even now with most aspects of GTA being moddable, it is still quite challenging due to the complex nature of the game's environments. It's also worth mentioning that nearly everyone in the GTA3/Vice City/San Andreas mod scene have purchased each title twice. Each of those three games was released in the month of October for the PlayStation 2, with the PC version following in May or June of the year after. Most of us ran out to buy the console versions to play the games as soon as they came out, and later bought them again for PC just for the mods. So for Rockstar, the ESRB, or the US Congress to prevent us from modding games would have a devastating impact on sales.

 

[CynicalMexican]

Ah yes 2005 back then the general population assumed all GTA players would become murderers in the future

[Ivan1997GTA]

16 minutes ago, CynicalMexican said:

Ah yes 2005 back then the general population assumed all GTA players would become murderers in the future

I wonder if the DMCA takedown of GTA mods actually inspired someone to kill people in protest? I wouldn't put it past it.

Edited August 4, 2021 by Ivan1997GTA

[Adminsaredicks]

1 hour ago, CynicalMexican said:

Ah yes 2005 back then the general population assumed all GTA players would become murderers in the future

Yeah at least they all have fear of us . Good times, hunting yetti and be serial killer by proxy!

 

 GTA Online players are actually threat to democracy, they try to kill you, when you mind your own business.

[CynicalMexican]

39 minutes ago, Ondr4H said:

Yeah at least they all have fear of us . Good times, hunting yetti and be serial killer by proxy!

 

 GTA Online players are actually threat to democracy, they try to kill you, when you mind your own business.

Well GTAO can be argued as the jumping of the shark in the series so yeah.

[Killerman29]

Take Two Dicks are going to kill our loved gta games, really sad times for the veteran gta players

[CynicalMexican]

48 minutes ago, Killerman29 said:

Take Two Dicks are going to kill our loved gta games, really sad times for the veteran gta players

It's been kinda surreal. Seeing GTA go from being all about the open world individual experience to cheap MP trash rehashed every few months or so has been a sight to see.

[Killerman29]

so, take two dicks are really worried about mods because "bad behavior" and "threatening the economy" but then you can find this in the online of its main game:

 

[CynicalMexican]

I guess the GTA-T2 Universe had a massive recession instead of COVID, so take down the mods!

[MP5]

On 8/7/2021 at 1:02 AM, Killerman29 said:

so, take two dicks are really worried about mods because "bad behavior" and "threatening the economy" but then you can find this in the online of its main game:

 

GTA Online is T2's ideal ecosystem devoid of easy mod access, when you're at the mercy of what a corporation's says you can and can't do whether you like it or not, and, if you're on the PC version, malicious unauthorized menu users that freely skirt the rules and even mess with people's experiences as it doesn't diminish their bottom line of said corporation and even stimulates profits through user frustration. It's particularly bad when hackers were able to interfere with players on GTA5's single player due to the game's absolutely insecure online integration with Social Club.

 

I've stuck with the series since GTA2, modded and unmodded, but the aggressive push for DRMs and multiplayer the past decade, nearly 4000 hours of painful grinding on Online (as its MTs are too overpriced) and the rapid creative drain at Rockstar Games and North has left me really ambivalent about GTA6. And now with the mod takedown fiasco affecting older games I actually still enjoy (and paid for) and undermining a passionate subset of the fanbase, it's tipped me over to never wanting to purchase any future releases from Rockstar or T2.

 

Not that it matter. Unless the younger/console-oriented playerbase that's only known GTA playing Online can see through T2's social engineering and learn to protest against the decline in quality of the series, I don't expect anything to change.

Edited August 9, 2021 by MP5

[Guest]

For the people who are creative at modding and creating something for us the players to enjoy, this just kills their creativity and throws it down the drain like it's nothing.

 

And that economy thing didn't make sense to me. Was I the only one who barely understood anything?

 

And on the topic of missions, DYOM is one of the biggest mods to have ever come out for the GTA SA, so seeing missions being there is worrying for the people of that community. And when you kill off something big like that, people will lose interest in those games and may even leave GTA for good.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Leon Luther

[BS_BlackScout]

 

 

They did a sloppy job, there are still a bunch of mods like the San Andreas one.
(Let alone the other 4000 mirrors of the very same mods out there. Talk about "drying ice".)
EDIT: e.g:
https://libertycity.ru/files/gta-5/105155-vice-v-0.1-beta.html
https://libertycity.ru/files/gta-5/100403-grand-theft-auto-v-san-andreas-alpha.html
https://libertycity.ru/files/gta-5/107686-liberty-city-prealpha-0.16.html
https://libertycity.ru/files/gta-5/87370-vice-city-in-v-1.0-full-map.html
 

Edited August 10, 2021 by BlackScout

[guard3]

I can sleep peacefully knowing that Strauss saved the economy again

[dkluin]

Good behavior!

[Ash_735]

As already pointed, earlier today GTA modding website LibertyCity.ru were handed a bunch of DMCA take downs by, you guessed it, Take-Two, the following mods have been removed from the website...

• Vice Cry: Remastered 1.0
• OpenManhunt 1.0.0
• Liberty revind
• Bullworth - OpenBull 1.0.0
• ViIV (Alhpa version и Version 3)
• Grand Theft Auto V: Bullworth 0.1 [ALPHA]
• SA2LC
• Liberty City & Vice City v4.0

The full article can be found on their website, this is one of the more recent confirmations of Bully and Manhunt content also being taken down.