Massive GTA 5 Liberty City modding project bites the dust after "friendly takedown" chat with Rockstar, dev says there's "no negativity" between it and Take-Two
"We appreciate all the support that the project has received."
A massive modding project which had brought a full re-creation of GTA 4's Liberty City to GTA 5 has gone the way of most pedestrians who cross a street Michael, Franklin, or Trevor happen to driving down. After a conversation with Rockstar Games, which the mod's developers have stated wasn't "a DMCA, rather a friendly takedown", it's been pulled from the internet.
Dubbed the 'Liberty City Preservation Project', the mod was released to the public over the holidays, having been in the works since 2018. It looked pretty damn cool, and had clearly had a bunch of effort put into the details of the version of LC it let you fly out to from Los Santos and wreak havoc in.
Anyway, late yesterday, one of the lead developers on it - Nkjellman - posted this message in the Dirscord server of World Travel (that's the team behind the mod): "Due to the unexpected attention that our project received and after speaking with Rockstar Games, we have decided to take down the Liberty City Preservation project. We appreciate all the support that the project has received, and we look forward to continuing to pursue our passion for modding the Grand Theft Auto series."
Bummer, right? Rockstar's got a weird history when it comes to its attitude to modding, having done plenty of stuff like this before, so it's not exactly out of the blue, but it sucks people can no longer download the thing this group of modders worked on, even if we've obviously got to take them at their word here that they were the ones who made the call and respect that choice.
In a follow-up post put up on the server after the team "noticed a lot of misconceptions and theories surrounding our latest announcement", Nkjellman explained: "This isn’t a DMCA, rather a friendly takedown, mutually agreed upon by all parties involved. There is no negativity between us and Rockstar Games/Take-Two Interactive."
They added that the World Travel Discord server which was being used as the place players could download LCPP from "will be kept for future projects and community mods", but links to download the mod won't be allowed to be shared on it. The also advised against trying to get the mod via "unofficial links", since these could well contain malware or viruses.
Previously, when it decided to release the LCPP to the public, the group said it was banking on Rockstar having changed its approach to mods since acquiring modding team Cfx.re, but, alas, it seems that's sadly not been the case.
So, you'll have to find something else GTA-ish to play while you wait for GTA 6 to drop.