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

[Guest]

 

I hope Zelnick is happy because he saved the economy and he and his shareholders can now buy their 1578th 800mil yacht!

Edited August 10, 2021 by H-G

[Ash_735]

Oh and we have a nice video from Badger Goodger wrapping up the ModDB era take downs:

 

[gtafaninwest]

Boy, do I despise Strauss Smalllick.

[Kirsty]

50 minutes ago, Ash_735 said:

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.

 

Is this the first time a Manhunt-related mod has been involved in these takedowns? 

[Ash_735]

6 minutes ago, Kirsty said:

 

Is this the first time a Manhunt-related mod has been involved in these takedowns? 

Technically GTA Underground had its own version of Carcer City which was made by stitching the level maps together and then added on to.

 

Though this is the first Manhunt only content port that was taken down.

[ikt]

Quote

or (iv) making new games, stories, missions, or maps.

 

Has any of this been enforced yet? The addition to the non-action exclusion list is rather dirty, but I haven't seen this applied yet.

[DoctorMike]

 

[LarcenousUrsine]

2 hours ago, ikt said:

Has any of this been enforced yet?

GTA Miami Vibe seems to have had a new scratch-made map - and 7 new missions as well.

 

Don't think any strictly-mission-packs have been struck yet.

[CynicalMexican]

4 hours ago, Ash_735 said:

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.

The fact that they're going after LibertyCity.Ru just goes to show that Strauss Zelnick has gone apesh*t.

[D T]

f*ck, and I was looking for a proper ViIV download too. I wish I'd known it was on there a couple weeks ago.

 

Of course, this sh*t is going to get swept under the rug again while the news cycle spends the next 6 months lauding Rockstar on their rushed remake trilogy. Content creators won't speak out either, cause they don't give a singular f*ck as long as their sh*tty FiveM servers remain untouched. It'll happen again and again until the cycle is completely normalized.
 

And the grimiest thing about it is how calculated this all is. They're purposely avoiding taking down mods that would cause too much uproar, but just enough older ones to discourage future projects. It's cowardly as all f*ck and borders on psyops.

[GhettoJesus]

18 hours ago, Leon Luther said:

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

Don't worry it's just a random excuse they can stick with when explaining their decision to people who know nothing about gaming and modding (much like Zelnick himself). Saying "m-muh economy" is dramatic enough for everyone but the community to nod their heads. In reality mods don't generate any losses.

[gts.]

Ah, thanks for those takedowns Rockstar. This is just another night I will can sleep well after Takedown Strauss and full lawyer team kept developers safe (since he said mods are attacking developers too) and my gta online's economy intact (mods hits gta online's economy somehow as well).

Edited August 11, 2021 by gts.

[JulioG]

COMRADES, WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. Honestly this decision made by take two is absolutely ridiculous. Mods support games, they don't "affect the economy" in a negative way. Bruh come on. In fact, Skyrim is a perfect example. Modding encourages people to purchase and play games 

Edited August 11, 2021 by JulioG

[CynicalMexican]

7 hours ago, JulioG said:

COMRADES, WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. Honestly this decision made by take two is absolutely ridiculous. Mods support games, they don't "affect the economy" in a negative way. Bruh come on. In fact, Skyrim is a perfect example. Modding encourages people to purchase and play games 

It makes me think this was some stroke of ego. Like we botched hard enough that we got a giant middle finger in our faces.

[MAHQ231]

Take-Two must stop hostile to

GTA Mods they Revive GTA 3D Universe from certain death after Rockstar focused in HD Universe.

 

Who with me that the reason why 3D Universe still alive is by Mods like

(Direct X2.0 and GTA Underground)

and not by Remastered Versions

(XBOX 360,PS3,Mobile)?

[uNi]

What we need is a SDK, clear rules and a centralized place where mods exist. 

[CynicalMexican]

2 hours ago, uNi said:

What we need is a SDK, clear rules and a centralized place where mods exist. 

Create a mods site based in Somalia

[Ash_735]

Some more websites following the updates:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[videotechuk_]

On 8/12/2021 at 1:26 PM, uNi said:

What we need is a SDK, clear rules and a centralized place where mods exist. 

I just want a website where we can download mods for every Rockstar title rather than having just one website tailed to a specific game. Some sites go far as to make their users sign up to their site to download a mod (sigh, Nexus Mods). It would be cool to see an official site from Rockstar where people can upload mods with some type of approval process alongside some monetization to compensate mod devs. If I recall Rockstar did giveaway Remedy's Max Payne tools for 3DS Max years ago? I think it's still sitting around somewhere on the Rockstar site.

Edited August 13, 2021 by VideoTech_

[LarcenousUrsine]

4 hours ago, VideoTech said:

If I recall Rockstar did giveaway Remedy's Max Payne tools for 3DS Max years ago?

It was bundled with the Max Payne 1 CD if random Steam tutorials and some old article on editing the game I found are to be believed. You can now get it on ModDB since the Steam version doesn't have it.

 

Spoiler

Oh, and here's a little extract from R*'s website, courtesy of Wayback Machine. Puts things into perspective.

 

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by LarcenousUrsine

[psxdriverplayer]

21 minutes ago, LarcenousUrsine said:

It was bundled with the Max Payne 1 CD if random Steam tutorials and some old article on editing the game I found are to be believed. You can now get it on ModDB since the Steam version doesn't have it.

I've owned the original Max Payne 1 CD for a short while a couple years back, it had those tools. And no other official releases. Except maybe on some website that's not with us anymoar.

[Frogzilla]

Most likely mods are being taken down because there will be remakes of the games (gta 3, vice city, San Andreas). Can't have mods hurt sales. 

[zanesix]

14 hours ago, computertech82 said:

Most likely mods are being taken down because there will be remakes of the games (gta 3, vice city, San Andreas). Can't have mods hurt sales. 

With a company like Rockstar there is 0% chance that mods would ever hurt any sales. They could literally release a jpeg of a turd that costs 70 dollars and they would still make billions. It hasn't stopped them before and it wouldn't stopped them now.

[Jezus Holy Christ]

It's not only mods with assets from other R* games at this point, so I'd love it if someone explains the legality of this whole thing. I have questions that googling US/International laws and general information on the web can't answer.

How are minor mods or tweaks, tools, mods with entirely new maps made from scratch, etc. illegal as long as they're not sold? This doesn't seem like a copyright matter anymore. How is it different from fan art?

How can R* who are more popular than some of the biggest technology, fashion and lifestyle brands today, with a customer base so huge, make sure they're the only outlet with content related to their IP?

And before someone says it, no, modding is not borderline piracy. Some are a few modified game files, sometimes they're part of compressed game files themselves that you need to personally alter for the mod to work. Most of them don't contain the entirety of the game so you definitely must have the original to override it with the mod. I don't get it. Why would they choose to go after free mods rather than pirated copies of the games?

Edited August 14, 2021 by Jezus Holy Christ

[B Dawg]

On 8/11/2021 at 3:43 AM, D T said:

f*ck, and I was looking for a proper ViIV download too. I wish I'd known it was on there a couple weeks ago.

If you want the better ViIV, get CitizenIV and check the #viiv-restoration channel on the discord.

Edited August 15, 2021 by B Dawg

[GhettoJesus]

On 8/14/2021 at 2:54 AM, computertech82 said:

Most likely mods are being taken down because there will be remakes of the games (gta 3, vice city, San Andreas). Can't have mods hurt sales. 

Which is an absolutely scummy move on behalf of T2. Let's see how many people will keep their vows about not buying anything from R* once the new trilogy drops.

Edited August 15, 2021 by GhettoJesus

[Ardoink]

-deleted-

Edited September 7, 2021 by Ardoink

[Ash_735]

 

 

 

And a nice thread here with thoughts by long time YouTuber and GTA fan Vadim M:

 

 

[psxdriverplayer]

On 8/15/2021 at 11:48 AM, GhettoJesus said:

Let's see how many people will keep their vows about not buying anything from R* once the new trilogy drops.

 

I find vows interesting since it feels like many say that just for show or something.

 

Meanwhile there's me who has made a vow of "not gonna get into Steam" when I first heard about that and at that time it was semi-new. I'm still not there, and internet has given me crap about that. My real life friends, while they use that, don't seem to care.

 

And also this thing that I don't buy remakesters, only original versions, preferably original releases to be played on that hardware it was made for. Partly ties to principles. I would feel that the success of remakesters is tied to a few things: people having excuses not to play the originals such as: either too lazy to re-buy stuff if they have possibly sold them (money can't be an issue if they buy new stuff), can't be bothered to use that if they still have it, or not bothering to even get the original(s) despite finding it interesting. All these are partly tied to "looks liek crap these days, it won't do". And meanwhile I argue that while a remakester, especially if made from the ground up, it's technically not the same game and muscle memory may f*ck you over. And those little changes piss people off anyway and they wish they could interact with originals again.

 

Also it annoys me when there's these people who don't like a company and say they're "boycotting their crap" yet they show interest anyway through pirating. Dammit just threaten them instead by saying "not buying unless ye do this" and not pirate that. Really hate this mindset, not liking things so stuff should be free to grab. (Note: not to say that everyone boycotting does this. Just an observation I've seen some to have.)

 

Also I also use no mods on PC side to play things, another principle. Thus I claim that anyone who claims old (GTA) games are unplayable without any moddings are fricken loonies. That is just wrong. (In regards to an accusation I got: I'm not saying here that using mods itself is a loonie thing, but the claim that something is unplayable without them is. Seen many use that exact word despite probably meaning "you might want to use mods to play" which brings the question of why not just say so then.) The common issue probably is that old releases on new hardware = nope. Also coming back from playing modern releases to old releases after five million years = different feel = get used to it again or else. If playing old (GTA) games without mods would be truly impossible these days, I wouldn't have been able to 100% VC and SA (in reverse order) quite recently through original copies and without cheating (you know, those button inputs).

 

Besides I feel that since PC is so known for this modded crap, and since seems like with stuff I play people use "fancy crap" in their videos, I feel that I can't trust those since they use "fancy crap" and I don't. There should be more unmodded 100% playthroughs for us who care about the original everything without any "fancy crap". A scenario: if a game (any game, really) doesn't offer 16:9. It must be "fixed" despite the fact that that is just a (small) change, and "fix" implies something is broken, in this case things really aren't broken.

 

Plus it's always hilarious to me whenever there's a thread of "[game issue goes here] used five million mods whyt is going ons halp pl0x" since it's probably a mod causing all that kek. To be fair I've had a few issues as well as a "vanilla game" (<- hate that term) user, and they've been usually solved by a simple search. For examples, Max Payne (1) installer complained about not enough RAM despite having more than enough for it - this could be safely ignored. Then it refused to load a map. Patching it (which I don't like doing either) took care of that.

 

(NOTE: This is an added section.) Now it may seem that I hate this mod stuff - it's yes and no to that. As I mention later in this thread, having separate custom games and separate analytical tools is completely fine. Despite me not using custom games, but I've utilized some external tools to analyze things.

 

 

Also wishing that all those MS-DOS game walkthroughs would include ze installation process to them as well, that's an adventure usually. And it would help to reveal some control changing that people may not be aware of.

 

 

EDIT 2021-08-17: Wording changed to better in various paragraphs a bit, also clarified a few points and added a section. Thank you.

Edited August 16, 2021 by psxdriverplayer
Clarifictions and wording and such

[Ash_735]

20 minutes ago, psxdriverplayer said:

Thus I claim that anyone who claims old (GTA) games are unplayable without any moddings are fricken loonies. That is just wrong.

They're not unplayable, but these versions do have a lot of bugs and missing features that certain mods fix and would be recommended as essential now just to get the best out of these games.

 

21 minutes ago, psxdriverplayer said:

Besides I feel that since PC is so known for this modded crap, and since seems like with stuff I play people use "fancy crap" in their videos, I feel that I can't trust those since they use "fancy crap" and I don't.

ohhhh you're one of those people.