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It looks like Take-Two and Rockstar are still keeping a close eye on the GTA V modding community as this week, the devs behind the widely used OpenIV mod tool received a cease and desist letter. Since Grand Theft Auto V's launch, Take-Two has been making a habit of policing the modding scene and has sent legal notices to several developers. OpenIV is the latest, leading to the modding tool being taken offline, after being in development for almost ten years.
OpenIV has been around for years and is described as “the ultimate modding tool” for not just GTA V, but GTA IV and Max Payne 3 as well. In a post titled Take Two VS. Modding, OpenIV developer ‘GooD-NTS' explained that modding has “always been a gray zone”, adding that due to the difficulties involved in going to court, the team behind OpenIV decided to just comply with Take-Two's C&D notice.
In Take-Two's words, OpenIV “allows third parties to defeat security features of its software and modify that software in violation Take-Two's rights”. According to GooD-NTS, this accusation is unfounded and while the team still believes OpenIV should be considered safe legally, legal battles take a lot of time and huge amount of effort for little gain.
“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”
So with all of that said, OpenIV is no longer in distribution. However, with the mod being so popular for so long, there may be some mirrored versions floating around the web.
KitGuru Says: Take-Two's stance on modding since the launch of GTA V has really been disheartening to see. Fans have loved modding the GTA games for years, it is part of the series' DNA but unfortunately, it seems no amount of bad PR is going to change Take-Two's mind at this point.
Take-Two can do whatever they want. Screw the community: when you sell tens of millions of games, that won’t matter. And GTAV is a great game. Shame that this is how they operate nowadays.
Well, they don’t want you extending the life of their last game, they want you buying their next… just depends how many slaps to the face consumers will take, I suppose.
Most don’t play mods I’d guess, so for the majority it matters not.
youd guess wrong
Imagine if Honda stopped repairing or making replacement parts for their 2017 model cars when the 2018s came out . . . I have no sympathy for them.
Really? Well, since you’re so sure I’m wrong, you can back that up with some form of statistic?
Let’s focus on just this OpenIV issue ’cause i refuse to believe you mean most don’t use mods in general ’cause in the pc community alone that statement just boggles the mind. So, you could just go off of the 72,421 supporters as of this post on the Save GTA V OpenIV Petition. Or the over 37,100 followers, subscribers and likes they have on their combined social media accounts and youtube. The articles themselves mentioning the strong mod communities, or the 50,213 negative reviews on steam. Granted I’m sure there were many neg reviews before this incident but since the announcement the overwhelming number of negative reviews that specifically state its because of the mod kill makes your statement naive at best.
That proves nothing. I could say that 75k is a tiny minority compared to the number of GTA V players out there. Unless you know the percentage of people who typically give these reviews or sign these petitions as a total of the gamer population, all you have is a few angry costumers.
Confirmation bias, plain and simple.
You could dismiss this as my own bias but I don’t own the game nor have I played it. I’m just focusing on steam since that’s where all the negative reviews are originating. You can’t leave a review on steam unless you have a registered code to the game, so at the minimum we’re talking about those who have purchased the game. Point being, their disgust shouldn’t be dismissed. You’re assumption is that this wouldn’t affect the majority. The average amount of active players in the last 30 days was aprox, 55,214 players. At its peak since April 2015 online players were 360,761 (for reference sake). I would think it’d be fair to suggest the negative reviews/signatures on the petition were coming from the active players or the players it would affect that like to use mods.
Tbh though I doubt any of the outrage or petitions/negative reviews is really going to change anything. I’ve seen people trying to get others to just not buy Take-Two games anymore. Protest with your wallet so to speak (aiming at Red Dead Redemption 2). If they could accomplish that then I think that would resonate with not only others in the gaming community but devs as well. But again, I doubt it.
RDR2 won’t appear on PC anyway, at least not anytime soon. Also, if they can get that many people to not buy, so that T2 will actually feel it in their sales, I’d be impressed. A company that sells tens of millions of copies of its games isn’t gonna care about a few hundred thousand.