A group of creators working on the 14-year-old mod GTA United, built primarily inside Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, have decided to stop development fearing a DMCA takedown from Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two Interactive.
The modders said in an update post that the spate of DMCA takedowns the publisher has handed out in recent weeks raised many alarms. As a result, the team has preemptively decided to remove all of GTA United’s uploads, including those for Vice City 2 San Andreas and Liberty City 2 San Andreas, in preparation for some possible legal letter from Take-Two Interactive.
“Due to the increasing DMCA takedowns against various GTA San Andreas map modifications, it is with a heavy heart that we must announce that we decided to preemptively take all remaining instances of GTA United, including its predecessors VC2SA and LC2SA, down,” the modders wrote.
“This means that, while our team haven’t received a takedown notice, we opted ourselves to say goodbye on our own conditions, and that effectively now all our official uploads are taken offline,” the modders said. “We are sorry to all the people that enjoyed playing GTA United, many of which we had positive interactions with, but this is a step we felt was necessary, as Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games seem to gradually reject more and more ‘Modding’ of their games, even if it’s the older ones.”
GTA United is a San Andreas-based mod for PC. It, um, unites Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City’s maps to effectively replace the one in San Andreas.
This mod has been around for a decade and a half. Work on the project began in 2006, with the first beta launched in 2007 along with the official “Vice City 2 San Andreas” name. “Liberty City 2 San Andreas” came out in the same year. The two combined in late 2007 to form GTA United, which received a 1.2 version in December 2012 and remained available until now.
According to PC Gamer, Take-Two Interactive began issuing DMCA takedowns left and right in recent weeks to a handful of developers working on GTA-related projects. This includes GTA: Underground and the 15-year-old mod GTA: Liberty City, as well as HD texture packs for Vice City.
It’s unclear why Take-Two Interactive is so adamant about pulling mods for Rockstar Games’ older Grand Theft Auto titles. Fans speculate that Rockstar may be working on a series of remakes or remasters, but neither Take-Two nor any Rockstar developer has yet to comment on these rumors.
In other GTA V news, the game’s standalone GTA Online mode has received a new Los Santos Turners update that adds new cars, like a souped-up version of The Comet, and more missions. Grand Theft Auto V also seems poised to leave Xbox Game Pass sometime in the next few weeks.
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