Former GTA dev weighs in on Rockstar's attempt to silence Vice City mod that ports the whole game to GTA 4: "This is what companies are supposed to do"

gamesradar.com:

Take-Two recently took down the YouTube channel of a group of GTA 4 modders porting Vice City into the game, and a former Rockstar developer has weighed in on the situation.

Last week, the YouTube channel that was sharing videos about Vice City: Nextgen Edition was taken down. This is a mod project that aims to port GTA: Vice City into the engine of GTA 4. While the YouTube channel is gone, the mod itself remains available, as the modders are based in Russia where Rockstar doesn't have an easy legal route to stop them.

Ex-Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij says: "Take2/R* are a commercial company. They will take down mods that interfere with their business interests. The VC NextGen Edition mod for GTA 4 directly competes with the Definitive Edition."

Vermeij used to run a blog about his time at the company before he was told it was upsetting some of the company's devs and stopped posting on it, so he's all too familiar with how protective Take-Two is of its IP.

Take2/R* are a commercial company.They will take down mods that interfere with their business interests.The VC NextGen Edition mod for gta4 directly competes with the Definitive Edition.The Liberty City preservation project (gta4 in gta5 engine) would interfere with a…January 25, 2025

He continues: "The Liberty City preservation project (GTA 4 in GTA 5 engine) would interfere with a possible GTA 4 remaster. (No idea whether they're working on that. I think they should). There's no point getting angry about it. This is what companies are supposed to do. The best we can hope for is that they allow mods that don't interfere with their business. Such as DCA3 (GTA 3 for Dreamcast). Afaik they have recently been decent about letting these projects continue."

The Definitive Edition remaster was not well-received when it launched. There were bugs in all three games it came with, and Rockstar even apologized for the state of the game. Vermeij acknowledges this. Takedowns like this "would be easier to swallow if they