Report: Grand Theft Auto Makers Might Be Shutting Down Modding Tools

There have been some incredible mods for Grand Theft Auto V over the past few months, letting you play as everyone from Rick and Morty characters to The Lion King, depending where you looked. But it seems like Take-Two may be cracking down on modding tools.

A report indicates that one of the main modding tools for the PC version of the game, known as OpenIV, shut down as of June 5th, 2017. Apparently it was the result of a cease and desist letter sent by Take-Two, noting that modding for the game was deemed illegal.

The statement below got posted by OpenIV, and it's right to the point:

"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...

On June 5th, 2017, we had received an official Cease-and-Desist letter.
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".
Yes, this letter is illiterate both technically and grammatically (really, they don't even bothered with proof-reading the text).
Yes, we can go to court and yet again prove that modding is fair use and our actions are legal.
Yes, we could. But we decided not to.

Going to court will take at least few months of our time and huge amount of efforts, and, at best, we'll get absolutely nothing.
Spending time just to restore status quo is really unproductive, and all the money in the world can't compensate the loss of time.

So, we decided to agree with their claims and we're stopping distribution of OpenIV.

It was a hard decision, but when any modding activity has been declared illegal, we can't see any possibilities to continue this process,
unless top management of Take-Two company makes an official statement about modding, which can be used in court.

With many thanks for all modding community for all your fantastic creations,
OpenIV team."

It's sad to see this go, but some people may find a creative way around it. That said, it appears Take-Two is on the hunt to assure that modding is done less and less in its world of Grand Theft Auto. It even shut down a Red Dead Redemption related project before it had a chance to get off the ground.

Will this affect the game? Only time will tell, it seems…