Popular GTA mod OpenIV has been shut down by Rockstar lawyers after 10 years
OpenIV, a multi-purpose editor and archive manager for PC versions of Grand Theft Auto 5 and GTA 4 will no longer be distributed by the developers after an official Cease-and-Desist letter was handed out by lawyers from Rockstar's parent company.
The editor has been around for almost ten years, and was removed today according to a post on the the OpenIV website, and posted on the GTA Forums by GooD-NTS.
According to the letter sent by lawyers representing Rockstar's parent company Take-Two on June 5, OpenIV was "allowing third parties to defeat security features of its software and modify that software in violation Take-Two's rights".
Because going to court would take "at least a few months, huge amounts of effort," and according to the post "at best we'll get absolutely nothing," the developers decided to agree with Take-Two's claims and will stop distribution of OpenIV.
In the post, it's stated only "clean-room" reverse engineering was used for interoperability and there wasn't any distribution of original data or code, and "absolutely no messing with Online."
However, if you look over Rockstar's end-user license agreement (EULA) its states reverse engineering is prohibited.
"You agree not to... reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, display, perform, prepare derivative works based on, or otherwise modify the Software, in whole or in part..."
Still, people continued to make mods and Rockstar even stated it didn't take special issue with mods for GTA 5 on PC as long modders steered clear of GTA Online.
"To be clear, the modding policy in our license has not changed and is the same as for GTA 4," Rockstar said in a blog post in 2015. "No one has been banned for using single-player modifications, and you should not worry about being banned or being relegated to the cheater pool just for using single player PC mods.
"Our primary focus is on protecting GTA Online against modifications that could give players an unfair advantage, disrupt gameplay, or cause griefing. It also bears mentioning that because game mods are by definition unauthorized, they may be broken by technical updates, cause instability, or affect your game in other unforeseen ways."
So yes, it's okay to use mods, but it's not okay.
"Yes, we can go to court and yet again prove that modding is fair use and our actions are legal," reads the post from GooD-NTS. "Yes, we could. But we decided not to.
"Spending time just to restore status quo is really unproductive, and all the money in the world can't compensate the loss of time.
"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."
Most recently, the Red Dead Redemption map mod project for GTA 5 was pulled after the mod makers were contacted with a cease and desist letter.
OpenIV was used to create too many GTA 5, GTA 4, Episodes from Liberty City and Max Payne mods to list.