Last month, Take-Two took down numerous GTA mods, including GTA Underground and Kadakash’s AI-upscaled HD Mod for GTA: San Andreas. And during its recent investor call, Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick commented on those takedowns.
Zelnick claimed that while Take-Two is flexible, it will take down any mods that threaten its economy or when there is bad behavior.
As Zelnick said:
“We’re pretty flexible but we’ll issue takedowns if the economy is threatened or if there is bad behavior.”
Now I seriously don’t know how an HD Texture Pack would threaten the game’s economy. I also don’t know how GTA Underground would have bad behavior or threaten the game’s economy. We’re talking about legacy GTA games here, not mods for GTA 4 or GTA 5.
In short, we’re looking at a company that, for whatever reason, will shut down any mods it dislikes. Yes yes, this is their product and they can do whatever they want. However, most of the sales for all the classic GTA games are mainly due to their incredible mods, and not because PC gamers want to replay the vanilla versions.
From what we can see, Grand Theft Auto Vice City BETA Edition 3.5.6 is still available for download. Additionally, the Iron Man and Spiderman mods for GTA San Andreas are also available for download. Multi Theft Auto, a mod that adds full online multiplayer support to Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, is also still up. On the other hand, GTA Vice City Modern V2.0 is NOT available.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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