Popular GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas Mods Removed by Take-Two

Earlier this year, a project called re3 emerged that used reverse engineering to analyse GTA III and GTA: Vice City, enabling both games to be ported to other platforms (including Switch). Take-Two quickly shut down the project, but it came back to life a few months later.

As it turned out, this is not the end of the company's fight against fan-made projects. For several hours now reports about the removal of mods created for GTA III, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas appear on the internet. Mods that have existed for several years are being removed, which quite clearly shows the absurdity of the whole situation. If for such a period of time they did not bother anyone, then why are they disappearing only now? Fans associated with the games suspect that it may have something to do with remasters, which have been rumored for a long time.

List of victims of Grand Theft Auto's the publisher includes, among others, Vice City Overhaul (mod for GTA V), Vice City's total conversion mod recreating GTA 3 on new engine, in the form of GTA: Liberty City, Vice Cry, which implemented high-resolution textures and improved models in GTA: Vice City. To this we must add GTA: Underground combining all three parts released on the PS2 along with several other games from the company (Bully, the Manhunt series) into one title. Also mods moving two PlayStation exclusive installments - Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories - to GTA: San Andreas were removed.

It is worth noting here that mods are removed using the DMCA law, which enables the devs to remove content that violates the copyright. The info comes from the creator of GTA: Underground. This gives the opportunity to appeal Take-Two's decision, which will probably be used by the creators.

On the forum dedicated to the GTA series, fans have noted that Rockstar Games has quietly changed the provision in the rules of use of their games regarding mods. Until 2019, it stated that the company enabled mods for the games if they involved single-player content. In a more recent version of the article, this has been replaced with a note that includes a section highlighting that permission does not apply to using Take-Two's important franchises, creating new games, stories, maps and missions.

For this reason, the community thinks that this is another indication confirming that Rockstar Games is working on remasters of GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas. Others point out that it may be related to GTA 6, which we recently wrote about, that should go on sale around 2025. The truth (perhaps one of the employees of the legal department felt too confident) may come to light in the next few days.