Grand Theft Auto continues to be an iconic gaming franchise. The latest release sees three classic games, including Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, remastered in one package known as GTA: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition. Despite the initial excitement from fans at being able to re-experience these games, the launch has been rather rocky. Between reports of bugs and glitches in the game to some questionable visual choices and models of certain GTA characters, fans have been frustrated, to say the least.
On top of this shaky release, a mod site for Grand Theft Auto games known as libertycity.net has been hit with DMCA takedowns from Take-Two Interactive for certain mods. The website is a popular place for downloading certain GTA mods, covering every entry in the series, including the recent releases of the GTA Trilogy. A new blog post on the site details two mods that ended up being removed.
The first of these taken down Grand Theft Auto mods is known as GTA Advance PC Port Beta 2. This was a fan-remake of GTA Advance in GTA 3's engine, which had been in the works for a while. The original game was a 2D adventure developed by Digital Eclipse that was published by Rockstar in 2004, and as the name implies, was released on the Game Boy Advance.
The other mods that were taken down were for Grand Theft Auto 4, where it replaced the Niko, the protagonist of the game, with Johnny Klebitz, the protagonist of The Lost and Damned episode. This mod replaced everything Niko had with Johnny's, including his outfits, bikes, and weapon icons. Bizarrely, the last removal from the site wasn't a mod, but rather a save file. It was a save file that fans could download and continue from, where it had 65% of the story completed. These takedowns were met with hostility from some fans online.
There are some fans that are theorizing why these are occurring. Considering these DMCA takedowns are targeting specifically mods for Grand Theft Auto 4, along with rumors of a remaster of GTA 4, it would perhaps corroborate its development. Take-Two Interactive was targeting certain mods and taking them down a few months ago after the announcement of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy, so it is possible the same case is happening now. This is speculation for now however.
Source: Liberty City