Popular Grand Theft Auto Mod Tool OpenIV Shuts Down After Take-Two Sends Cease and Desist

[ffronw]

Popular Grand Theft Auto Mod Tool OpenIV Shuts Down After Take-Two Sends Cease and Desist

The popular Grand Theft Auto mod tool OpenIV has been shut down after the modders received a cease and desist letter from Take-Two Interactive.

One of the most popular Grand Theft Auto mod tool programs has ceased operations after it apparently received a cease and desist letter from Take-Two Interactive. The shutdown was announced in a post on twitter yesterday:

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/OpenIV/status/875078358912172035]

There's a bit longer message over on the OpenIV website [http://openiv.com/?p=1324]. It opens with "We feared that this day would come... And now it's here. The day, when GTA modding was declared illegal."

The team says that it "tried to play as nice as possible" for "almost 10 years of development." It stresses that it did not distribute the original data and code, and that it did not mess with GTA Online. Despite that, the team received a cease-and-desist letter on June 5.

The team decided not to go to court, because, "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." Instead, the team agreed to their claims and stopped distribution of OpenIV.

There's already a petition on Change.org [https://www.change.org/p/rockstar-games-save-openiv] asking Take-Two to pull back this decision, but as with most online petitions, it's unlikely to have much of an impact.

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[Arnoxthe1]

I'll just copypasta my last responses.

Right. So I was gonna buy GTA V sometime, but now? Nope. Congrats, Take Two. That move was a real winner there.

But you know what the really stupid thing is? This won't stop modding. In fact, it may even make it worse just so they can spite T2.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I'll just copypasta my last responses.

Right. So I was gonna buy GTA V sometime, but now? Nope. Congrats, Take Two. That move was a real winner there.

But you know what the really stupid thing is? This won't stop modding. In fact, it may even make it worse just so they can spite T2.

GTA V has been out for 4 years now; I doubt they're really invested in or expecting you or any other new players to buy in at this point. And while it won't stop modding, it definitely is not going to lead to mods made out of spite. Anybody who was going to mod is going to keep doing it, OpenIV as a base program will still be available elsewhere (or a knockoff will take it's place), and it is unlikely to have a huge impact one way or another.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

made out of spite.

You should take a look at the GTAV Steam review section.

 

[Tanis]

Question: 'How can a developer/publisher piss off their fan base, the one that can make a game live or die?'
Answer: 'This kind of bullshit'.


RiP OpenIV, you'll be back soon enough when another team takes over just to tell T2 to fuck off.

 

[Xorph]

What the fuck? Under what grounds could T2 even be filing this C&D? They're not distributing code or messing with online, so what legal ground could T2 -possibly- have?

 

[Ugicywapih]

What the fuck? Under what grounds could T2 even be filing this C&D? They're not distributing code or messing with online, so what legal ground could T2 -possibly- have?

It's in the article, the modders simply don't want to risk a lenghty, costly legal battle so they're whether the C&D has legal grounds and would hold up in court is irrelevant, since the people it's directed against don't intend to contest it.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

*Me from the other thread:*

What is most depressing about this is that despite craptastic moves like these, many many gamers will still buy their games.
Both current and next iterations. Even pre-ordering them..
With various excuses..

*shakes head sadly*

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Well, of course. Gotta nip stuff like this in the bud. If your revenue sources- I'm sorry, "customers"- start thinking that they can get new content for free, then how likely are they to lay out cash for your latest DLC?

EDIT: When I wrote this I thought it was in regards to a newly-developed Mod. The fact that this one has been going on for years, and was deliberately designed to only be useable for the single-player experience, makes me think it's a different situation: Take Two can't do anything about cheating in Grand Theft Auto Online, but they need to look like they can, so they've picked something that is in the same general realm and shut it down to look effective.

 

[SnowyGamester]

You should take a look at the GTAV Steam review section.

I did out of curiosity but it's gone. "There are no reviews for this product" Not sure if this is unprecedented or not. edit: Nope the store's just fucked up and nothing has reviews.

It's not in the Wayback Machine however Googles last cache tells the story.

Recent:
Mostly Negative (14,863 reviews) - 32% of the 14,863 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

You should take a look at the GTAV Steam review section.

I did out of curiosity but it's gone. "There are no reviews for this product" Not sure if this is unprecedented or not. edit: Nope the store's just fucked up and nothing has reviews.

Yeah, Steam's down randomly at the moment. You can use this handy site to check: https://www.issteamdown.com/

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I did out of curiosity but it's gone. "There are no reviews for this product" Not sure if this is unprecedented or not. edit: Nope the store's just fucked up and nothing has reviews.

Steam's up again. You can see the review rape now. It's glorious.

 

[hermes]

It doesn't surprise me at all. Rockstar has never been a friend of modders, ever.

Remember when Hot Coffee was discovered? What most people don't remember is that, back then, Rockstar tried to throw the modders under the bus to avoid legal penalties, by claiming it was never on the disk, it was them that created and included the controversial content.

Their attitude is a pity and not something that will go unnoticed when I decide if I should buy a new game from them, but not something entirely out of character.

 

[fix-the-spade]

GTA V has been out for 4 years now; I doubt they're really invested in or expecting you or any other new players to buy in at this point.

GTA 5 sold 15 million copies last year (and the same again in 2015), people are still buying it, a lot of people are still buying it.

GTA Online is very much an actively supported product, which I suspect is why this has happened out of the blue. GTA Online has a serious hacker problem and evidently someone at Take 2 decided it was time to do something about it. Except in that inevitable coorporate way they have gone after the biggest, most obvious target, which of course was the only one that was working positively for them.

They'll never touch the people behind the many GTA:O mods and hacks because they don't have an active community, or a forum. Although I suspect they'll do something in 'revenge' for this, because hackers are like that.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Wow. Dick move there, Take 2. I look forward to seeing how the modding community strikes back...

 

[Prime_Hunter_H01]

GTA Online is very much an actively supported product, which I suspect is why this has happened out of the blue. GTA Online has a serious hacker problem and evidently someone at Take 2 decided it was time to do something about it. Except in that inevitable coorporate way they have gone after the biggest, most obvious target, which of course was the only one that was working positively for them.

They'll never touch the people behind the many GTA:O mods and hacks because they don't have an active community, or a forum. Although I suspect they'll do something in 'revenge' for this, because hackers are like that.

I love GTA Online, I am loving the new DLC that just came out. I would like to believe that this is purely because of the hacking problem, but no. Fuck off Take Two, I would be glad to give the benefit of the doubt and think that this was a misguided attempt to try and scare off cheat modders but after the "Undermonetizing Users Comment" no, FUCK NO.

I will keep playing, though I am glad that I never gave in to the Shark Cards. I will just endure as modding will likely get worse as even more gamebreaking cheats will be made and used in "protest" like you predict. Assholes will have a righteous flag to hide behind and continue taking it out on the normal players who just want to make their money and play with their toys.

 

[natenate95]

Wow. Dick move there, Take 2. I look forward to seeing how the modding community strikes back...

Why?

What right does the modding community and creators of the mod have to "strike back" because their completely unwarranted project got shutdown like so many others? Where's the free pass they get for leeching...yes leeching off the content of developers and releasing their work whether for free or paid?

I mean how do stories like these still surprise or upset people, especially relatively informed gamers. Honestly if you're upset about this or any other mod being shut down, know that game companies are run by lawyers and accountants, and they truly, I mean truly, don't care about a modder's passion project or the community behind it.

Also, if news like a mod being shut down is enough to halt your purchase of their next title, I kinda have to say you weren't their target audience and you're in such a minority as to not constitute a response. Just the way things are.

 

[direkiller]

It doesn't surprise me at all. Rockstar has never been a friend of modders, ever.

They have changed that in the past 10 years. In part due to OpenIV.
They have actively promoted this mod(or rather products of this mod because it's more of a tool kit then a mod itself) before via tweets and such.

and I don't think this story is over,"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".
Hopefully it was just some marking executive overstepping his duties like with Darksouls, the snippets of the letter we can see reek of this is one guy who has no idea and did not run this idea by anyone.

 

[FalloutJack]

*Waits for modders to just workaround and do it anyway*

You know it's gonna happen. Official modding began in order to encourage modders to work WITH developers. So now, they'll just go back to form like nothing happened.

 

[Truehare]

It would be a shame for Rockstar and Take Two if someone would post OpenIV to a torrent site like the pirate bay or something like that...

Oh, wait, they totally did it already. Like, on the very same day this news came to light. And what's more, people like me, who had never been interested in modding GTA and had never even heard of OpenIV before, have now become aware of it and downloaded it just because we can.

And, to top it all off, GTA Online cheaters weren't affected in any way, which was the excuse they used for taking down OpenIV in the first place. Plus, the Steam all-time reviews have already taken the plunge from "overwhelmingly positive" to "neutral", and people are still posting negative reviews...

Good job pissing into the wind, Take Two!