modding Modders bowing down to Take-Two Interactive

[Sylence]

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.


--------------
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.
 

Quote

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.

 

 

 

gtaforums

[Sylence]

Since when Russian programmers (in this case hackers because they reverse engineered the code) obey the rules of a foreign nation? 

 

it's very strange, they could keep the project going and say f**k you Rockstar, because they are not violating any laws of Russia, the country of their residence, but no they decided to bow down.  also as you can see they said they could go to the court and charge them but they don't because they'll get absolutely nothing!

[DKT27]

Thread moved to Technology News.

 

This news has been all over the internet, it's related to the whole modding scene. Please do not make it country vs country as it effects all the games with modding support I think.

[Sylence]

15 minutes ago, DKT27 said:

Thread moved to Technology News.

 

This news has been all over the internet, it's related to the whole modding scene. Please do not make it country vs country as it effects all the games with modding support I think.

 

I know, but they mentioned several times in their posts about legal aspects and Russia so I explained more about that.

 

I've been playing this game since lunch, along with my friend who is more skilled in programming. first of all the company Rockstar pays more attention to the console peasants than PC players. releasing the game for consoles in 2013 and then for PC in 2015. known to everybody that they were paid up to do this. without these dirty movies nobody would even look at consoles tbh.

 

anyway, Rockstar and their parent company take-two interactive really do suck at anti-cheating. lobbies full of cheaters who can take away the money in your account or in-game bank account, modify cars saved in your garage, modify the appearance of your online character, change your Level, change your RP etc. and it doesn't stop there, me and my friend managed to find a way not only to use online cheats on online, but also to inject malicious code and target other players in the lobby (we only did this to each other for test purposes, not other players), and since GTA V exe is a trusted .exe, no antivirus could detect anything. this is very serious thing, but they pay no attention and even deny such bugs. 

 

they were better off using Steam's VAC if they couldn't make a good anti-cheat of their own. some people actually pay real money to buy their filthy shark cards and then in the next minute a cheater in the lobby can take away their money.

 

I think this decision to ban the use of this tool is not so unrelated to those bugs and security flaws. but doing this means that they couldn't do anything or fix the flaws on their own side, instead they decided to counter it by charging the creators of the tool. 

 

on Steam people deciding to change the rating of this game and give it 1-star.

[Sylence]

Lol

 

 

 

 

 

05:24 "But it would take a real bastard..." , no, Jim, it would Take.... Two...

[Alanon]

@saeed_dc Regarding Russia and the acceptance. The trick is in the fact that they managed to get the Russian representatives to react and send them the notice. If it were left only to the Americans, they would have ignored it completely. However, Russia has been making great efforts to stop piracy in the past two or three years (for whatever reasons). They went as far as blocking local giants like rutracker from being accessed in Russia.

 

Of course, the guys at rutracker had more will to resist since torrenting was shady from the get-go. So when they heard of the law that would eventually ban them, they prepared in advance, notified everyone on the 3-4 ways to bypass it, basically rose up to show the middle finger to everyone. But modding is a simple labour of love, and no one in their right mind would conceive that it is somehow illegal. The fact is that Rockstar made a shitty online game and that now they're looking at anything just to keep their cash cow. 

[Sylence]

5 hours ago, Alanon said:

@saeed_dc Regarding Russia and the acceptance. The trick is in the fact that they managed to get the Russian representatives to react and send them the notice. If it were left only to the Americans, they would have ignored it completely. However, Russia has been making great efforts to stop piracy in the past two or three years (for whatever reasons). They went as far as blocking local giants like rutracker from being accessed in Russia.

 

Of course, the guys at rutracker had more will to resist since torrenting was shady from the get-go. So when they heard of the law that would eventually ban them, they prepared in advance, notified everyone on the 3-4 ways to bypass it, basically rose up to show the middle finger to everyone. But modding is a simple labour of love, and no one in their right mind would conceive that it is somehow illegal. The fact is that Rockstar made a shitty online game and that now they're looking at anything just to keep their cash cow. 

 

I don't know who is more guilty, Rockstar or Take-two, but one thing is for sure they are getting tons of money and Rockstar 'could' do something about this but didn't.

 

what do you think would happen if OpenIV people didn't stop the project? Russia itself would go after them? 

 

if they really cared about the project they would let someone else continue it, in another country.