Take Two vs. Modding

This situation is resolved.

 

 

Original story:

We feared that this day would come... And now it's here.

The day, when GTA modding was declared illegal.

 

GTA modding had long and glorious history.

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...

On June 5th, 2017, we had received an official Cease-and-Desist letter.

It clearly says, that with OpenIV we "allow third parties to defeat security features of its software and modify that software in violation Take-Two's rights".

Yes, this letter is illiterate both technically and grammatically (really, they don't even bothered with proof-reading the text).

Yes, we can go to court and yet again prove that modding is fair use and our actions are legal.

Yes, we could. But we decided not 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.

 

It was a hard decision, but when any modding activity has been declared illegal, we can't see any possibilities to continue this process,

unless top management of Take-Two company makes an official statement about modding, which can be used in court.

 

 

With many thanks for all modding community for all your fantastic creations,

OpenIV team.

 

 

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

 

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To make it all clear, here is what happened:

 

1 - At May 19th, 2017, I received an email from the legal counsel for Take Two Interactive in the USA. In this email they has requested to stop immediately any further work and/or distribution of OpenIV and "Liberty City in GTAV" projects.

 

2 – In belief, that we did not violate any laws, I asked them to provide more detailed information about their request. They agreed to provide details by email.

 

3 – On June 5th, 2017, after two weeks of silence, I got C&D letter from lawyers company (legal representative of Take Two in Russia), both in electronic and paper form, to my employer address. This C&D accuses me in Russian laws violations.

 

4 – After many heavy thoughts, we had decided to agree with their claims. We did not make it easily; it is very hard decision for us.

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"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."

Here is my comment on this Rockstar's statement:

OpenIV, “Liberty City in GTA V” and all other mods/projects from my team and me are only specific for Single player. Rockstar must be well aware about the fact that you cannot access GTA Online while you have installed any OpenIV mod:

 

 

The statement "Unfortunately OpenIV enables recent malicious mods that allow harassment of players and interfere with the GTA Online experience for everybody", is just wrong and they know it. OpenIV does not allows or supports any kind of GTA Online mods. We always supported Rockstar in their right to protect GTA Online from hacks and cheats. But, Take-Two's C&D was specific for out Singleplayer mods and have no mentions about GTA Online.

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Moderator Edit By Vanzant

 

ANY posts containing acts of violence will result in your account being banned on the spot. - Vanzant

Edited July 4, 2017 by GooD-NTS

I remember when Rockstar was a good company ¯\_(ツ)_/¯