So last week there was quite  big news that came out regarding Take-Two Interactive. They sent a Cease and Desist order to the creators of the GTA modding team responsible for the Open IV software on June 5th 2017. For those not aware, the OpenIV modding software was being used to mod GTA IV and GTA V for offline purposes. It was also being used by Machinima creators to tell their stories.  OpenIV allowed for modders to add cars, weapons, play as super heroes and a ton of other really interesting things in the single player version of GTA V. There are entire YouTube channels that exist just around modding GTA V or creating Machinimas utilizing the game engine. What I’m trying to get across is that this program was irreplaceable and it’s loss is detrimental to the continued modding of GTA V offline.

Now since I’m one that does my best to present facts as objectively as I can, I’ll highlight real quick what the OpenIV team said on the 14th regarding their procedure and attempt to play nice within the lines of the law to the best of their ability and also provide a link to their full statement.

” 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…”

Here is a link to OpenIV’s full statement.  Many of you including myself may read this and be quite surprised that so much effort went into actually playing nice with Publishers and Developers while providing a very robust tool for the community. They went out of their way to do good on the part of the developer and Publisher and we are still here talking about how they got shut down for allegedly enabling online cheating.

Speaking of Take-Two Interactive, let’s take a quick look at their reason for targeting OpenIV for the cease and deist order. According to the OpenIV development team, the reason listed in the documents they received from the Take-Two Ineractive’s legal team state “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“”. I’ve underlined the part that they quoted stating that the reason for the letter was because OpenIV was being used to defeat security features. Now this statement in no way mentions that it was being used for online mischief or cheating of any description. However that is what most people think of with this type of event, that it was taken down to stop players from cheating online. A problem that GTA V has endured since release day and a point I’ll bring back up later. This idea is the reason the take down was issued, due to its use for online cheating. This was reinforced by a couple of important pieces of evidence.

The first bit is courtesy of PC Gamer who received a statement from Rockstar:  “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.”  This comment indicates to me a couple of different things.  Perhaps Take-Two and Rockstar don’t communicate as much as I would assume and don’t know what the other entity is doing, something I find unrealistic.  The other thought is Rockstar is trying distance themselves from the actions of their Publisher. If Take-Two’s actions were not focusing on single player mods then why did it specifically take down OpenIV ? The developer came out and said they don’t modify multiplayer content and it doesn’t even work when attempting to join online sessions. Below is what you see when you try to go online with OpenIV installed.

Suffice to say we are getting two different stories, one from the OpenIV developer and one from Rockstar and Take-Two.

Whether or not we will see any resolution to this situation that makes both parties happy is yet to be seen as there hasn’t been any word from Take-Two after the initial offering. Also as recently as two days ago Take-Two also shutdown  “Force Hax” and “Meyoo”. Info from PC Gamer again.  These two places sold hacks for GTA Online for the explicit use of cheating online. To me all this does is attempt to reiterate the point that was made by Rockstar that they are going after online cheating. If this really was the case then why did they shut down OpenIV and wait so long ?

After this part it is entirely my speculation and opinion on the situation. Here in lies the beginning of my biggest issue with this whole thing, the timing. Now most people are going to assume I’m talking about the recent Bethesda Creators Club announcement at E3 and I’m actually not. I’ll refer back to my comment above regarding GTA V online having cheaters from day one. As someone who played on day one and continued to play with friends for about 6th months after release these cheaters were ever present. To the point that within the first week someone gifted me 9 million dollars that I ended up surrendering back to Rockstar. My comment about the timing of this is weird to me because this “hacking” issue has been ever present and is nothing new to Rockstar or its online PC player base.  So why did they wait 2 years after the game was released to take a visible stand on cheating in GTA V Online ? When I say visible I mean I’m sure there were code changes going on in the background to attempt to curb it but they had no real affect. I find it very odd that this many years later they finally “do something” about online cheating even at the cost of single player modding. I’ve got two theories on why they waited this long, one being this was their absolute last resort and they were hopping they could fix the issues in house before going after teams legally, while this makes some sense it doesn’t really explain why OpenIV was taken down as it did not directly affect online play. My second theory is a bit farther out there but it revolves around Take-Two wanting to kill off the modding scene for GTA V at the end of its life cycle of active deployment. Now some people might say that is counterproductive to the life span of the game after it’s active development has ended and they would be right. However I get a feeling they are setting a precedent and landscape for their future games on PC. We can’t deny how much money Rockstar has made from GTA Online and can’t for a second think that more game mechanics won’t exist in future Rockstar games that come to PC to encourage the purchasing of Shark Cards or other in game items with real money. So my theory is that are trying to wipe the slate clean and kill off modding as a valid game experience for when their next game comes to PC so players will be forced to play the game Rockstar designed it and not leave an option to go back to the previous game to play the mods they want.  Only time will tell how things will turn out but at the moment modding in GTA V is dead and realistically no amount of negative Steam reviews or petitions will change that. Hopefully consumers can learn from this and not put so much trust in a company whose sole job is to make money off of other peoples leisure time.