If you recently saw the GTA 5 VR, Red Dead Redemption 2 VR, and Mafia VR mods and decided you'd want to check those out, you're out of luck. Because Take-Two wants to "take" them down ASAP (pun totally intended).
According to PC Gamer, Rockstar Games' parent company (who has a history of being stingy with mods and the modding community alike) has issued DMCA claims over the RDR2, Mafia, and GTA 5 VR mods. The modder behind these, Luke Ross, has spoken up about the incident.
Ross says that Take-Two is demanding that he remove all of the company's copyrighted works from his Patreon page. According to him, this "came as a surprise" due to the nature of how his RDR2, Mafia, and GTA 5 VR mods were built. That's because none of the mods he made used any copyrighted software belonging to the company, and none of them were even explicitly replacing the games.
It wasn't clear whether Take-Two's DMCA strikes against Ross were due to him potentially making a profit out of them. It's not a demonetization strike per se, considering the GTA 5 mod itself doesn't seem to be a paid one. Only his Red Dead Redemption VR and Mafia VR mods are obtainable via a paid subscription to his Patreon, beause both mods are still in development as of this writing.
Those who do subscribe to Ross' Patreon, however, does let him earn a considerable income. As per a report by The Verge, he reportedly earns $20,000 a month from his Patreon backers alone. This could be something that Take-Two considers moving forward, and can turn what's currently just a copyright strike into a demonetization strike.
Either way, you can still download Ross' GTA 5 VR mod from its Github page right now before (and if) Take-Two's copyright strike actually puts it out of action. It's a great way to experience the massively popular (and now pretty old) game from a different perspective, which offers way more than its standard built-in first-person camera mode.
Rockstar Games themselves haven't issued a comment on the issue yet. But perhaps it's only a matter of time before they do.
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Does Take-Two Hate Modders?
This is a pointed and frankly important question, considering how the GTA series (Red Dead and Mafia are still in their infancy in terms of modding) is one of the most modded video game franchises of all time. One can even argue that GTA 5 on its own has a modding scene that rivals even the biggest ones out there, such as Skyrim or Fallout.
Take-Two has been having its brushes with modders for a while - particularly those who work on GTA 5. Last year alone, the company managed to remove three major mods for GTA IV with a bevy of DMCA strikes, as reported by Kotaku. These three mods are as follows: GTA Advance PC Port Beta 2, The Lost And Damned Unlocked For GTA 4, and GTA IV EFLC The Lost And Damned.
There are more mods that have been taken down by Take-Two over the years, all of which deserve their own article. But it's been bad enough that modding group actually fought back against the company and filed a countersuit after they were sued themselves, saying Rockstar's parent company was wrong because their modding projects constituted fari use under the United States Copyright Act (via GamesIndustry.biz).
Heck, even Rockstar themselves told their parent company to chill out with the strikes, way back in 2017 (via Polygon). So why they're doing this now, we'll never know until an official statement is issued.
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This article is posted on GameNGuide
Written by RJ Pierce