Take-Two Crushes OpenIV GTA Modding Tool With Legal Ban Hammer
Take-Two clearly doesn't look at the modding scene with the same love as many of its peers. The Grand Theft Auto series has had a rich modding community for years, with its creative fans adding an incredible amount of content to Rockstar's most important series. Sometimes, even new mechanics are added. While most people who pick up the latest GTA don't even have modding on their mind, there are some others who buy the game with only modding in mind.
That says a lot not just about modding, but about what a great base for such mods Grand Theft Auto is. And that's despite the fact that the games are in no shape or form designed to support modding. Modders have to be extremely creative with how to get their mods to work, and Rockstar regularly releases game updates that break them.
Few achievements and a lot of hours? That's a GTA modding fan!
Instead of embracing the incredible demand for mods, and implement a similar system a la Bethesda, Take-Two has decided to issue a cease and desist demand to OpenIV, an integral backbone to the biggest GTA mods. Take-Two's biggest complaint is that "security features" are defeated, although given Rockstar's continual angst against players modding its games, it's seems like nothing but an convenient excuse. It's an excuse that fans are not buying, based on the current ratings for the game on Steam:
The most common explanation for Take-Two's move is that modders are taking away from the business of GTA Online, the component of the game that could continue to generate cashflow long after its release. The ultimate problem though, is that many modders are not interested in the online mode, or at least that online mode. They clearly believe the mods offer a better experience, and given just how massive these communities are, it's almost baffling that both Take-Two and Rockstar are not more eager to support modders.
It'd be nice if Take-Two backtracked, but from a business perspective, it might feel that it doesn't have to. It has millions upon millions of fans that don't care about modding, after all. It's just a bad situation all-around.
It has been a busy week for game mods. At E3, Bethesda announced that it'd soon be launching 'Creation Club', a service that aims to give gamers more content to add to their games, and modders more cash in their pockets. So far, opinions of the move have been mixed (paid mods are rare), but time will tell how it fares. At the end of the day, many modders put an incredible amount of time into their creations, so in a way, it's nice to see that Bethesda respects them.
